2

4
Queer
Settler
Colonialism
and
Indigenous
Decolonization

Scott
Lauria
Morgensen

5
6


8
 PREFACE
ix

ABBREVIATIONS
XV

INTRODUCTION
1

Part
I.
Genealogies

T.
The
Biopolitics
of
Settler
Sexuality
and
Queer
Modernities
31

2.
Conversations
on
Berdache:
Anthropology,
Counterculturism,
Two-
Spirit
Organizing
55

Part
II.
Movements

3.
Authentic
Culture
and
Sexual
Rights:
Contesting
Citizenship
in
the
Settler
State
91

4.
Ancient
Roots
through
Settled
Land:
Imagining
Indigeneity
and
Place
among
Radical
Faeries
127

5.
Global
Desires
and
Transnational
Solidarity:
Negotiating
Indigeneity
among
the
Worlds
of
Queer
Politics
161

6.
"Together
We
Are
Stronger":
Decolonizing
Gender
and
Sexuality
in
Transnational
Native
AIDS
Organizing
195

EPILOGUE
225

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
231

NOTES
235

BIBLIOGRAPHY
253

9
 277

10
 In
writing
close
to
the
other
of
the
other,
I
can
only
choose
to
maintain
a
self-reflexively
critical
relationship
towards
the
material,
a
relationship
that
defines
both
the
subject
written
and
the
writing
subject,
undoing
the
I
while
asking,
"what
do
I
want
wanting
to
know
you
or
me?"

TRINII
T.
MINri-IIA,
Woman,
Native,
Other

THIS
BOOK
MAKES
THREE
CENTRAL
CLAIMS
at
the
intersections
of
queer,
Native,
and
settler
colonial
studies
and
related
fields.
First,
in
the
United
States,
modern
queer
cultures
and
politics
have
taken
form
as
normatively
white,
multiracial,
and
non-Native
projects
compatible
with
a
white
settler
society.
Although
queer
hegemonies
may
be
disrupted
by
challenging
whiteness
or
nationalism,
that
alone
may
not
fully
disturb
their
conditioning
by
settler
colonialism,
which
aims
to
amalgamate
subjects
in
a
settler
society
as
"non-Native"
inheritors,
and
not
challengers
of
the
colonization
of
Native
peoples
on
occupied
Native
lands.
Second,
within
broad
transnational
alliances
(focused
here
in
the
United
States),
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
directly
denaturalize
settler
colonialism
and
disrupt
its
conditioning
of
queer
projects
by
asserting
Native
queer
modernities.
By
repudiating
heteropatriarchy
as
a
colonial
project,
recalling
subjugated
Native
knowledges,
and
forming
alliances
that
trouble
settler
sovereignty
and
pursue
decolonization,
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
have
created
critical
theories
and
movements
to
which
all
people
can
respond.
Third,
settler

11
colonialism
and
its
conditioning
of
modern
sexuality
produce
an
intimate
relationship
between
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
that
I
interpret
as
conversations.
Non-Native
and
Native
queer
politics
formed
by
telling
different
kinds
of
stories
about
the
meaning
of
indigeneity
to
queer
people,
which
entered
them
into
power-laden
conversations
that
nevertheless
remained
open
to
creative
transformation.

Native
and
non-Native
queer
politics
formed
their
relationship
in
the
spaces
between
them
produced
by
settler
colonialism.
Settler
societies
create
spaces
that
are
at
once
material
and
symbolic,
as
Sherene
Razack
argues,
an
insight
I
extend
by
interpreting
them
as
intimately
relational.'
Such
spaces
appear
in
specific
places:
Indigenous
lands,
whether
sustained
by
collective
claims
of
Indigenous
sovereignty,
stolen
and
possessed
by
settlers,
or
traversed
and
contested
by
Natives
and
non-Natives
within
settler
society.
In
these
places,
interchanges
of
Native
and
non-Native
people
locate
them
in
power-laden
spaces
of
relationship,
which
this
book
interprets
for
queer
Natives
and
non-
Natives
as
conversations.
My
account
takes
particular
inspiration
from
Katie
King's
account
of
debates
in
feminist
theory
as
"conversations
in
U.S.
women's
movements."2
King
explained
feminist
debates
over
difference
not
as
interruptions
of
feminist
politics,
as
some
Western
feminists
have
claimed,
but
as
formations
worthy
of
study
as
contentious,
border-crossing
deliberations.
Asking
how
"feminist
objects
of
knowledge
...
are
made
and
materialized
over
time
in
political
production,"
King
investigated
in
regard
to
any
object
the

histories
of
its
production
over
time,
the
contests
for
meanings
within
which
it
is
embedded,
the
political
contours
that
are
the
circumstances
out
of
which
it
is
fabricated,
and
the
resources
and
costs
of
its
making,
contesting,
and
stabilizations.
(xvi)

King
contextualized
this
work
as
the
study
of
"conversations,"
or
"units
of

12
political
agency
in
action
in
theoretical
discourse,"
which
she
distinguished
from
"`debates'
as
political
contour
from
theoretical
contents."
Examining
not
only
"formal
writing
or
circulating
manuscripts"
but
also
"oratory,
group
production,
private
oralities,
[and]
publications,"
King
asked
how
historical
deliberations
as
conversations
produced
the
objects
and
subjects
of
U.S.
women's
movements
(56).
This
response
to
the
racial
and
national
contestation
of
feminism
recognized
conflict
as
productive
to
feminist
thought
and
as
deserving
of
study.
King's
account
suggests
at
once
a
theory
of
feminist
knowledge
production
and
a
method
for
engaging
it.
The
analytic
category
"conversations"
invokes
intersubjective
social
activity,
as
would
be
made
apparent
by
ethnography,
oral
history,
or
archival
or
literary
study
of
texts
written
and
circulated
for
deliberation.
But
King's
work
engages
such
evidence
from
within
a
genealogy
of
discursive
registers
that
link
or
split
varied
claims
and
contexts.
Several
implications
for
theory
and
method
follow.
Thinking
in
these
terms
invites
one
to
read
narratives
as
relating
across
differences
that
become
meaningful
in
the
contested
spaces
of
conversation.
In
turn,
interpreting
claims
in
conversation
will
reveal
failures
of
recognition-
as
people
speak
past
one
another,
or
in
mutual
ignorance-as
well
as
moments
of
confrontation,
as
evidence
of
interrelationship.
Finally,
as
discursive
fields
that
are
multiple,
contradictory,
and
actively
contested,
conversations
center
the
incitement
by
power
relations
of
creative
possibilities.

King's
model
informs
my
account
of
the
formation
of
queer
knowledges
even
as
I
extend
it
to
address
Native
and
settler
colonial
studies.
King
theorized
how
feminist
claims
across
differences
of
social
location
and
geography
become
interreferential
in
a
U.S.
context.
My
work
examines
and
then
displaces
the
settler
state
by
interpreting
U.S.
queer
politics
across
the
national
differences
of
Native
peoples
and
sovereignties.
Here,
"conversations"
indexes
interactions
among
non-Native
and
Native
queers
not
within
or
as
"U.S."
queer
movements
but
as
distinct
queer
projects
within
the

13
transnational
relationships
formed
by
Native
and
non-Native
people
in
a
settler
society.
Indigenous
feminist
thought
is
helpful
in
modeling
the
interpretation
of
knowledge
production
under
such
conditions.
For
instance,
Andrea
Smith's
"intellectual
ethnography"
of
Native
feminists
portrays
activists
as
theorists
who
challenge
settler
colonialism
from
within
"unlikely
alliances,"
where
transnational
ties
among
Native
people
and
with
non-Natives
work
to
defend
Native
nations
and
pursue
decolonization
on
Indigenous
feminist
terms.'
My
engagements
with
activist
dialogues
across
the
national
differences
of
queer
Natives
and
non-Natives
is
a
feminist
and
trans-allied
effort
to
disturb
the
centrality
of
white
cisgender
gay
men-a
location
that
could
describe
me-as
hegemonic
subjects
in
the
definition
of
queer
modernities
on
settler
colonial
terms.'
To
some
degree,
my
work
responded
in
this
way
to
models
of
feminist
reflection
on
questions
of
"home,"
such
as
white
antiracist
feminist
accounts
of
whiteness,
or
the
responses
by
feminist
ethnographers
to
anthropology's
coloniality
that
led
Kamala
Visweswaran
to
call
for
"homework"
as
a
condition
of
fieldwork.'
Yet
my
research
confronts
a
problem
that
self-
reflection
cannot
contain:
contested
spaces
of
knowledge
production
where
interlocutors'
competing
claims
tell
more
in
their
differences
with
one
another
than
any
single
narrative
can
tell
alone.
In
response,
I
learned
from
feminist
scholars
who
examine
politicized
knowledge
production
as
its
situated
participant,
and
thence
as
potential
subjects
of
critique
as
well
as
interlocutors
in
modeling
change.6
My
intent
is
to
explain
the
historical
formation
of
Native
and
non-Native
queer
politics,
in
alliance
with
Indigenous,
feminist,
queer,
trans,
and
Two-Spirit
critiques
that
already
displace
the
settler
colonial
processes
I
examine.7

The
Introduction
explains
my
theoretical
analysis
of
settler
colonialism
conditioning
the
formation
of
Native
and
non-Native
queer
modernities
in
conversation.
It
draws
from
and
advances
Native,
critical
race,
feminist,
and
queer
studies
by
centering
Indigenous
feminist
and
queer
thought
and
Native

14
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activism.

Part
I,
"Genealogies,"
examines
the
historical
precedents
and
diachronic
registers
of
conversation
that
condition
the
movements
examined
in
this
book.
Chapter
1,
The
Biopolitics
of
Settler
Sexuality
and
Queer
Modernities,"
explores
how
"settler
sexuality"
queers
Native
peoples
to
attempt
their
elimination
compatibly
with
asserting
racialized
heteropatriarchal
control
over
subject
people
of
color
placed
on
Native
lands.
The
queering
of
white
settlers
then
depends
on
the
existence
of
a
settler
colonialism
that
conditions
both
heteronormative
and
queer
gender
and
sexual
politics
on
stolen
land,
which
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
resist.
Chapter
2,
"Conversations
on
Berdache:
Anthropology,
Counterculturism,
Two-Spirit
Organizing,"
then
examines
how
twentieth-century
examinations
of
berdache
formed
key
contexts
where
non-Native
and
Native
queer
subjects
and
politics
formed
in
relationship.

Part
II,
"Movements,"
traces
how
these
genealogies
are
manifested
in
historical
and
ethnographic
cases
of
late-twentieth-century
non-Native
and
Native
queer
politics.
The
chapters
trace
three
qualities
of
modern
nonNative
queer
projects-the
pursuit
of
cultural
authenticity,
ancient
roots,
and
global
purview-inspired
by
Native
American
indigeneity
or
challenged
by
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people.
Chapter
3,
`Authentic
Culture
and
Sexual
Rights:
Contesting
Citizenship
in
the
Settler
State,"
traces
how
desires
for
cultural
authenticity
linked
queer
politics
in
the
United
States
to
what
Elizabeth
Povinelli
has
called
"liberal
settler
multiculturalism"
while
being
challenged
by
multiracial
and
transnational
queer
alliances
led
by
TwoSpirit
activists.
Chapter
4,
`Ancient
Roots
through
Settled
Land:
Imagining
Indigeneity
and
Place
Among
Radical
Faeries,"
examines
how
non-Native
gay
counterculturists
pursued
multiple
desires
for
queer
indigeneity
that,
while
contested
by
antiracist
critique,
confronted
their
settler
formation
only
in

15
relationship
to
Native
gay
and
Two-Spirit
men.
Chapter
5,
"Global
Desires
and
Transnational
Solidarity:
Negotiating
Indigeneity
among
the
Worlds
of
Oueer
Politics,"
explains
the
globalism
of
U.S.
queer
modernities
as
effects
of
settler
colonialism
by
tracing
how
homonationalism
and
white
settler
queer
primitivism
may
link
within
white
queer
politics
and
diasporic
queer
of
color
critiques
until
resituated
by
the
transnationalism
of
TwoSpirit
organizing.

Chapter
6,
"`Together
We
Are
Stronger':
Decolonizing
Gender
and
Sexuality
in
Transnational
Native
AIDS
Organizing,"
explains
how
Native
activist
critiques
of
heteropatriarchy
in
Native
communities,
settler
states,
and
global
arenas
mark
the
settler
colonial
biopolitics
of
health
governance
and
incite
global
Indigenous
alliances
for
decolonization.
The
Epilogue
returns
to
the
implications
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activisms
carry
for
queer
non-
Natives
and
all
people
to
critically
transform
settler
colonialism.

16
17


18
WE
ARE
CAUGHT
UP
IN
ONE
ANOTHER,
we
who
live
in
settler
societies,
and
our
interrelationships
inform
all
that
these
societies
touch.
Native
people
live
in
relation
to
all
non-Natives
in
the
context
of
the
power
relations
of
settler
colonialism,
though
they
never
lose
inherent
claims
to
sovereignty
as
Indigenous
peoples.
Non-Natives
live
in
relation
to
Native
peoplewhether
or
not
they
know
this,
whether
or
not
they
recognize
that
Indigenous
peoples
exist-as
though
Native
lands,
societies,
or
cultures
were
theirs
to
inherit,
control,
or
enjoy.
Settler
societies
engender
a
normative
relationality
between
the
designations
"Native"
and
"settler"
that
imbues
histories
of
intermingling,
interdependence,
or
the
attempted
erasure
of
indigeneity
as
a
marker
of
national
difference.
The
distinction
between
"Native"
and
"settler"
informs
all
power
in
settler
societies
and
their
relations
with
societies
worldwide.'

This
book
examines
how
settler
colonial
power
relations
among
Native
and
non-Native
people
define
the
status
"queer."
It
argues
that
modern
queer
subjects,
cultures,
and
politics
have
developed
among
Natives
and
non-Natives
in
linked,
yet
distinct,
ways.
The
imposition
of
colonial
heteropatriarchy
relegates
Native
people
and
all
non-Native
people
of
color
to
queered
statuses
as
racialized
populations
amid
colonial
efforts
to
eliminate
Native
nationality
and
settle
Native
lands.
Modern
sexuality
comes
into
existence
when
the
heteropatriarchal
advancement
of
white
settlers
appears
to
vanquish
sexual
primitivity,
which
white
settlers
nevertheless
adopt
as
their
own
history.
When
modern
sexuality
queers
white
settlers,
their
effort
to
reclaim
a
place
within
settler
society
produces
white
and
non-Native
queer
politics
for
recognition
by
the
state.
Yet
memories
and
practices
of
discrepant
sexual
cultures
among
Indigenous
peoples
and
peoples
of
color
persistently
trouble
the
white
settler

19
logics
of
sexual
modernity.
For
instance,
Native
modes
of
kinship,
embodiment,
and
desire
such
as
those
today
called
"Two-Spirit"
produce
Native
queer
modernities
that
denaturalize
settler
colonialism.
The
comparative
studies
in
this
book
show
settler
colonialism
as
the
context
in
which
non-Native
and
Native
people
produce
modern
queer
subjects,
cultures,
and
politics.

A
methodological
shift
in
Native
studies
heralded
by
such
scholars
as
Linda
Tuhiwai
Smith
and
Robert
Warrior
theorizes
settler
colonialism
by
tracing
the
"intellectual
histories"
(Warrior)
and
methods
of
Native
peoples
practicing
survival,
resistance,
and
decolonization.2
Scholarship
in
settler
colonial
studies
must
support
this
turn,
as
when
Patrick
Wolfe
theorizes
settler
colonialism
as
"a
structure,
not
an
event"
that
calls
for
a
sustained
denaturalizing
critique.'
Andrea
Smith
calls
on
Native
studies
to
refuse
its
"ethnographic
entrapment"
in
the
description
of
Native
cultures
and
instead
become
an
interdisciplinary
site
for
explaining
and
transforming
a
world
defined
by
settler
colonialism.'
She
promotes
this
shift
by
invoking
queer
theory,
which
displaced
the
description
of
sexual
minorities
in
gay/lesbian
studies
by
theorizing
heteronormativity
as
a
power
relation
that
conditions
all
subjects
and
social
life.'
Scholars
at
the
intersections
of
Native
and
queer
studies
have
responded
to
these
calls
by
demonstrating
that
each
field
is
intrinsic
to
the
other.'
Smith
explains
that
the
heteronormativity
of
settler
colonialism"
has
subjected
Native
and
non-Native
people
to
settler
colonial
rule
and
regimes
of
modern
sexuality.
In
this
context,
"queer"
statuses
accrue
to
nonheteronormative
identities-such
as
gay,
lesbian,
bisexual,
transgender,
or
queer-after
colonial
heteropatriarchy
first
redefines
embodiment,
desire,
and
kinship
to
eliminate
Native
culture,
control
racialized
populations,
and
secure,
in
Sherene
Razack's
term,
a
"white
settler
society."
In
this
book,
queer
will
refer
to
statuses
produced
by
the
heteropatriarchal
power
of
white
supremacist
settler
colonialism.
My
analysis
joins
critics
of
homonormativity
in
arguing
that
all

20
"queer"
statuses
are
not
equivalent.'
Jasbir
Puar
critiques
"homonationalism"
as
the
process
whereby
whiteness
and
imperialism
create
U.S.
queer
subjects
as
"regulatory"
over
peoples
queered
by
U.S.
rule.'
I
resituate
Puar's
account
to
argue
that
in
a
white
settler
society,
queer
politics
produces
a
settler
homonationalism
that
will
persist
unless
settler
colonialism
is
challenged
directly
as
a
condition
of
queer
modernities.'
Native
and
queer
studies
must
regard
settler
colonialism
as
a
key
condition
of
modern
sexuality
on
stolen
land,
and
use
this
analysis
to
explain
the
power
of
settler
colonialism
among
Native
and
non-Native
people.

This
book
investigates
how
settler
colonialism
produces
what
I
call
"nonNative
queer
modernities,"
in
which
modern
queers
appear
definitively
n o t
Native-separated
from,
yet
in
perpetual
(negative)
relationship
to,
the
original
peoples
of
the
lands
where
they
live.
The
phrase
suggests
a
settler
colonial
logic
that
disappears
indigeneity
so
it
can
be
recalled
by
modern
non-
Natives
as
a
relationship
to
Native
culture
and
land
that
might
reconcile
them
to
inheriting
conquest.1°
Thus,
"non-Native"
signifies
not
a
racial
or
ethnic
identity
but
a
location
within
settler
colonialism.
Non-Native
queer
modernities
naturalize
settler
colonialism
when
they
confront
queer
differences
as
racial
or
diasporic
in
a
manner
that
sustains
Native
disappearance.
If
queer
subjects
align
with
whiteness
or
homonationalism,
their
settler
colonial
roots
may
seem
clear.
But
even
multiracial
and
transnational
queer
critiques
of
racism
and
imperialism
can
erase
Native
people
and
naturalize
settler
colonialism
in
ways
that
indirectly
or
directly
define
queer
modernity
as
not
Native.
This
book
examines
"Native
queer
modernities"
as
projects
that
formed
historically
precisely
to
displace
the
settler
colonial
logics
that
sustain
"non-Native
queer
modernities."

Native
queer
cultures
and
politics
critique
colonial
heteropatriarchy
by
asserting
Indigenous
methods
of
national
survival,
traditional
renewal,
and

21
decolonization,
including
within
Two-Spirit
identity.
My
analysis
of
the
distinctions
among
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
invokes
the
critical
models
of
queer
of
color,
queer
diasporic,
and
queer/migration
critiques
and
women
of
color
and
transnational
feminisms
as
they
interact
with
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
critiques.
My
analysis
is
that
of
a
white
queer
critic
within
multiracial,
normatively
white,
and
non-Native
queer
spaces,
whose
settler
colonial
conditions
I
denaturalize
in
response
to
Native
queer
critics
who
are
pursuing
Indigenous
decolonization.

While
confronting
the
seeming
intractability
of
settler
colonial
power
relations,
this
book
shows
how
subjects
acted
creatively
to
transform
them.
It
affirms
the
Foucauldian
insight,
highlighted
by
Judith
Butler,
that
power
is
the
very
condition
of
agentive
action-a
transformative
context
for
its
repetition
and
potential
destabilization."
The
reproduction
of
norms
and
their
critique
require
close
reading
to
ascertain
which
forms
of
creativity
might
produce
decolonizing
ends.
I
am
not
suggesting
that
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
share
the
same
origin,
for
only
Native
queer
modernities
recall
a
life
unconditioned
by
settler
colonialism
and
their
relationship
formed
precisely
by
negotiating
discrepancies.
Feminist
ethnographer
Anna
Tsing
theorizes
the
creative
effects
of
discrepancies
encountering
power-laden
relationship
in
the
form
of
"friction,"
as
when
global
hegemonies
engage
local
situations
to
elicit
heated
exchanges
along
unexpected
routes
of
interpretation
and
negotiation."
I
examine
the
settler
colonial
power
relations
conditioning
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
as
a
frictional
space
producing
contrasting
yet
interdependent
accounts
in
the
form
of
"conversations."
Here
I
invoke
Katie
King's
mapping
of
debates
in
U.S.
women's
movements
over
differences
of
gender,
race,
and
nation
as
discursive
spaces
existing
within
a
power-laden
interrelationship,
which
she
called
"conversations.""
I
interpret
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
as
forming
within
the
intimate
relationships
of
conversation,
in
which
their
friction
produced
a
multiplicity
of

22
narratives
for
textual
and
ethnographic
interpretation,
while
mapping
genealogies
wherein
their
differences
became
inter
referential
amid
the
persistent
and
transforming
power
of
settler
colonialism.
Queer
subjects
in
a
settler
colonial
situation
become
caught
up
in
one
another
from
within
the
creative
and
constrained
spaces
of
conversations
and
the
power
relations
they
produce
and
negotiate.
This
book
critically
engages
those
conversations
to
clarify
histories
and
incite
change.

Conversations
on
Queerness,
Indigeneity,
and
Settlement

Citational
Tactics:
Another
Mother
Tongue
and
Living
the
Spirit

Closely
reading
articulations
among
white
and
Native
narratives
of
queer
modernity
maps
their
relational,
yet
ultimately
divergent,
locations
on
Native
lands
and
in
settler
society.
During
the
1980s,
Native
and
white
lesbian
and
gay
writers
in
the
United
States
produced
deeply
inter
referential
texts,
as
demonstrated
by
the
San
Francisco
organization
Gay
American
Indians
first
group
of
its
kind
in
the
United
States,
formed
in
1975and
white
lesbian
writer
Judy
Grahn.
Although
GAI's
membership
came
from
across
North
America,
its
focus
was
to
serve
Native
people
in
the
San
Francisco
Bay
Area,
where
Grahn
also
resided.
Their
work
situated
their
distinct
liberations
within
a
Native
or
white
settler
relationship
to
queer
locations
on
Native
land
and
in
a
settler
society.

Judy
Grahn's
award-winning
book
Another
Mother
Tongue:
Gay
Words,
Gay
Worlds
(1984)
narrated
U.S.
lesbian
and
gay
history
as
a
colonial
desire
of
non-Natives
for
a
sense
of
place
on
Native
land.14
Grahn
cited
recent
research,
notably
accounts
of
Native
American
history
reprinted
in
Jonathan
Katz's
Gay
American
History
(19
76),
and
she
also
took
inspiration
from
accounts
of
a
primal
gay
spirituality,
as
described
in
Arthur
Evans's
Witchcraft
and
the
Gay
Counterculture
(1978).
Grahn
argued
that
by
respecting
gender

23
and
sexual
diversity,
Native
American
societies
and
other
ancient
or
Indigenous
peoples
traditionally
recognized
a
primal
truth
shared
by
all
gay
men
and
lesbians,
a
claim
backed
for
her
by
anthropological
and
colonial
accounts
of
berdache.
She
implicitly,
and
at
times
directly,
addresses
her
readers
as
non-Natives
identified
with
Euro-American
culture-for
lack
of
a
clearer
description,
white
people-who
look
to
ancient
or
Indigenous
cultures
for
inspiration.
Such
claims
were
not
original
with
Grahn,
though
she
focused
on
lesbians
rather
than
gay
men,
as
Arthur
Evans
had
done
in
Witchcraft
and
the
Gay
Counterculture,
and
explained
their
oppression
through
a
lesbian-
feminist
analysis
of
heteropatriarchy.
She
sought
to
shift
lesbians
and
gay
men
from
narratives
of
perversion
to
identification
as
a
subjugated
people
seeking
liberation.
She
describes
white
U.S.
gay
men
and
lesbians
as
needing
Native
cultural
authenticity
to
learn
to
speak
in
their
own
"mother
tongue."
Yet,
as
her
title
indicates,
that
tongue
remains
"another"
when
modern
non-Natives
adopt
Indigenous
identifications
in
their
pursuit
of
liberation.

Grahn's
concept
of
an
Indigenous
nature
for
lesbians
and
gay
men
appears
as
a
subtext
when
she
juxtaposes
her
narrative
to
italicized
passages
addressing
her
first
lover,
Von
(Yvonne).
Here
Grahn
appears
to
fulfill
an
old
love
whose
survival
in
an
earlier
era
would
have
been
eased
by
the
knowledge
she
now
has.
We
learn
that
in
1959,
Von
brought
the
eighteenyear-old
Grahn
out
into
a
lesbian
relationship
when
they
were
living
in
rural
towns
in
eastern
New
Mexico.
Grahn
explains
to
Von
what
she
sees
as
a
universal
gay
pattern
strongly
linked
to
berdache.
She
recalls
a
sense
of
an
absent
history
defining
her
life
and
Von's
in
a
region
now,
ironically,
marked
by
proximity
to
the
histories
that
will
save
them:

We
had
no
idea
of
the
gay
customs
barely
suppressed
or
still
functioning
in
the
Indian
cultures
around
us,
Von,
as
we
grew
up
each
in
her
isolated
small
Anglo
town.
By
the
time
we
were
eighteen,
we
were
cut
off
from

24
 our
own
Euro-American
people
by
their
hostility
toward
the
very
essence
of
our
lives,
our
Gayness
...
We
felt
and
acted
rejected,
alienated,
and
thoroughly
"queer."
I
know
that
if
we
could
have
known
anything
about
the
Navajo
nadle,
of
the
Bo-the
of
the
Crow,
of
the
Hwame
women
of
the
Pima,
so
much
of
our
alienation
and
terror
would
have
left
us.
We
could
have
understood
our
own
behavior,
or
specialness,
as
a
gift
as
well
as
a
burden
and
as
an
asset
to
our
society
as
well
as
its
apparent
nemesis.
We
could
have
played
the
American
game
of
cowboys
and
Indians
with
a
brand-new
twist."

Grahn
argues
that
Native
histories
of
acceptance
oppose
efforts
by
white
people
to
"queer"
their
own.
But
she
also
identifies
whites
as
settlers,
having
inherited
from
a
history
of
wars
a
proximity
and
contrast
to
the
Indian
cultures
around
us."
Positing
an
Indigenous
embrace
for
queer
exiles
from
a
white
settler
society
lets
her
imagine
switching
allegiances
to
play
"Indians"
against
her
own
people.
Philip
Deloria,
in
Playing
Indian,
explains
that
white
Americans
associate
marginality
and
resistance
with
the
Indian
as
an
internal
antagonist
to
settler
society,
which
then
lets
them
impersonate
indigeneity
when
they
launch
social
critiques
that
reconcile
them
to
settler
society.
Grahn
admits
that
the
Native
histories
she
seeks
remain
"barely
suppressed
or
still
functioning"
in
the
very
Native
communities
near
her
hometown.
Yet
her
story
displaces
that
intimacy
with
occupation
by
investing
in
emptied
Native
land
as
a
past
and
present
home.
She
wishes
that
she
and
Von
had
known
of
Native
"gay
roles":

we
might
have
recognized
more
personal
reasons
for
the
deep
attraction
we
both
felt
for
the
ancient
Indian
cultures
everywhere
present
in
the
Southwest.
You
and
I
often
went
out
into
the
deserts
and
mesas
to
walk
ar roy o s
near
abandoned
stone
villages,
peering
into
vine-filled
underground
kivas
amber
with
October
light,
turning
over
the
fine-

25
 ground
sand
potsherds
left
from
hundreds
of
years
ago.
We
did
not
particularly
collect
anything.
We
just
went
there
to
feel
the
oldness
of
the
places,
to
think
about
what
might
have
been.
We
felt
at
home
there,
as
"at
home"
as
we
felt
anywhere.
We
took
comfort
in
this
feeling.'6

The
desires
for
Native
roots
Grahn
voices
here
later
sparked
the
intellectual
journeys
of
her
book-where,
Renee
Bergland's
work
suggests,
the
Indian
recurs
as
a
ghost
defining
and
motivating
the
narration
of
a
settler
subject.''
Yet
Grahn
also
names
her
youthful
desires
as
queer-or,
more
precisely,
queered
in
the
sense
of
estranged
from
her
"own
Euro-American
people."
She
defends
a
universal
"Gayness,"
but
her
first
sense
of
belonging
to
indigeneity
arose
not
from
that
knowledge
but
from
the
"thoroughly
`queer"'
experience
of
being
exiled
from
white
settler
society
and
then
taking
comfort
in
imagining
her
own
indigenized
emplacement.
White
settler
heteropatriarchy
creates
queers
who
resolve
their
exile
through
land-based
relationships
to
disappeared
Native
people.
Grahn's
liberatory
vision
of
a
global
and
transhistorical
Indigenous
"Gayness"
offers
a
more
deeply
queer
relationship
to
inheriting
white
settler
colonialism
on
Native
lands.
Her
book
narrates
Native
peoples
as
part
of
a
disappeared
past
that
white
settlers
inherit,
and
that
grants
queer
exiles
solace
and
a
means
for
them
to
come
"home."

Grahn's
deferral
of
Native
people
from
her
narrative
of
a
modern
queer
present
is
interrupted
at
a
crucial
moment
more
than
halfway
through
the
book.
In
a
widely
cited
passage,
she
responds
to
the
existence
of
Native
gay
and
lesbian
activists:

The
day
I
saw
a
poster
declaring
the
existence
of
an
organization
of
Gay
American
Indians,
I
put
my
face
into
my
hands
and
sobbed
with
relief.
A
huge
burden,
the
burden
of
isolation
and
of
being
defined
only
by
one's
enemies,
left
me
on
that
enlightening
day.
I
understood
then
that
being

26
 Gay
is
a
universal
quality,
like
cooking,
like
decorating
the
body,
like
singing,
like
predicting
the
weather.
Moreover,
after
learning
about
the
social
positions
and
special
offices
fulfilled
by
Indians
whose
tribes
once
picked
them
for
the
task
of
naming,
healing,
prediction,
leadership,
and
teaching
precisely
because
they
displayed
characteristics
we
call
gay,
I
knew
that
Gayness
goes
far
beyond
simple
activity.
What
Americans
call
Gayness
not
only
has
distinct
cultural
characteristics,
its
participants
have
long
held
positions
of
social
power
in
history
and
ritual
among
people
all
over
the
globe.'$

Like
her
story
of
growing
up
next
to,
yet
apart
from,
Native
peoples,
Grahn's
affirmation
of
Native
activists
is
mediated
by
their
distance.
Without
her
having
had
any
prior
interaction
with
Gay
American
Indians,
reading
the
poster
simultaneously
triggers
and
authorizes
the
desires
she
describes
in
her
book.
If
the
mere
"existence
of
an
organization
of
Gay
American
Indians"
can
launch
her
chain
of
associations,
then
Grahn
seems
to
be
primed
to
make
Native
peoples
facilitate
cathartic
healing
for
her
life
as
a
white
lesbian
settler
on
Native
land.
While
the
chronology
in
this
passage
must
be
read
against
the
one
in
her
letters
to
Von,
the
passage
suggests
that
she
views
Native
gay
and
lesbian
organizing
as
something
apart
from
her
own.
Thus,
rather
than
projecting
indigeneity
as
something
far
off
in
space
or
time,
only
to
be
drawn
upon
to
liberate
white
settlers,
Grahn
only
meets
Native
people
in
the
same
temporal
and
spatial
horizons
of
her
queered
life
within
relational
locations
defined
by
settler
colonialism.

Members
of
Gay
American
Indians
told
quite
different
stories
about,
and
for,
Native
people,
yet
they
also
ultimately
adapted
Grahn's
narrative
to
their
own
ends.
After
the
formation
of
GAI,
cofounders
Barbara
Cameron
(Lakota)
and
Randy
Burns
(Paiute)
received
invitations
to
explain
their
work
to
non-
Native
gays
and
lesbians.
In
a
1976
interview
in
the
Advocate
(reprinted
in

27
Gay
American
History),
Cameron
and
Burns
call
GAI
a
support
group
for
Native
lesbians
and
gay
men,
which
Cameron
describes
as
"first
and
foremost
a
group
for
each
other."
Cameron
also
says,
"I
really
align
myself
with
Indians
first
and
gay
people
second."19
The
group's
leaders
describe
their
desire
to
educate
Native
people
and
to
ensure
that,
as
Cameron
puts
it,
"Indians
know
that
there
are
gay
Indians,
both
sexes"
(Katz,
334).
As
Burns
explains:

In
the
Indian
community,
we
are
trying
to
realign
ourselves
with
the
trampled
traditions
of
our
people.
Gay
people
were
respected
parts
of
the
tribes.
Some
were
artists
and
medicine
people.
So
we
supply
speakers
from
the
group
to
appear
at
Indian
gatherings.
Sometimes
we
are
booed
or
jeered,
but
it
doesn't
last
long.
(Ibid.,
333)

Cameron
and
Burns
present
GAI's
aim
as
only
secondarily
to
educate
nonNatives.
In
this
interview,
they
do
not
divulge
information
about
historical
gender
roles
in
Native
societies,
and
non-Natives
are
not
invited
to
identify
with
Native
histories.
But
they
do
urge
readers
of
the
Advocate
to
recognize
the
value
of
Native
lesbians
and
gays
organizing
with
one
another
and
within
Native
communities
as
signs
that
they
are
resisting
the
power
of
settler
colonialism
and
racism,
which
condition
the
sexism
and
homophobia
they
face.

The
GAI
History
Project
was
begun
in
1984
to
record
Native
histories
of
gender
and
sexual
diversity
and
members'
own
lives
and
produced
the
landmark
collection
Living
the
Spirit:
A
Gay
American
Indian
Anthology
(1988).20
Contributors
described
these
histories
in
various
national
contexts,
and
encouraged
pantribal
identities
that
could
cross
and
link
these
contexts.
No
contributor
argued
that
Native
gays
and
lesbians
represent
the
original
nature
of
all
sexual
minorities,
or
that
Native
histories
also
belong
to
nonNatives.
Rather,
Midnight
Sun
(Anishnaabe)
and
Maurice
Kenney

28
(Mohawk)
affirm
themes
in
the
memoirs
of
Clyde
M.
Hall
(Shoshone-
Bannock),
Erna
Pahe
(Navajo),
and
others:
histories
of
gender
and
sexual
diversity
in
particular
nations
can
be
reaffirmed
by
their
members,
while
pantribal
activism
can
link
them
for
mutual
inspiration.21
Hall
argues
that
if
traditions
have
been
lost,"
they
"need
to
be
researched
and
revived"
to
support
"groups
and
societies
for
gay
Indians"
that,
like
"the
contemporary
pow-wow,"
can
form
a
"modern
Indian
tradition"
meeting
needs
among
Native
people
today.-2
Burns
presents
these
insights
as
GAI's
having
created
an
urban
network
reminiscent
of
Renya
Ramirez's
account
of
"Native
hubs."
In
her
reading,
San
Francisco
Bay
Area
American
Indian
communities
defined
home
as
a
site
of
movement
for
Native
people
traversing
settler
colonial
diasporas,
where
they
reasserted
national
identities
while
also
forming
broader
solidarities.-3
Burns
explains
that
many
GAI
members
"had
never
lived
in
cities"
and
that
our
dream
was
to
return
someday
to
our
reservations
and
help
our
people-and
many
of
us
have
returned."
In
the
city,
GAI
"re-
created
the
kinship
ties
of
the
traditional
Indian
family"
as
an
"extended
family
for
gay
Indians,"
meant
for
not
only
those
of
us
who
live
in
the
San
Francisco
Bay
area,
but
for
our
many
family
and
friends
who
regularly
visit
from
other
areas."24
He
argues
that
the
diverse
knowledge
that
GAI
assembled
about
Native
traditions
let
members
identify
as
"Indian,
yet
contemporary
and
pantribal"
(5).

Living
the
Spirit
presents
its
contributors
as
mobile
subjects
who
remain
linked
to
tradition
and
peoplehood.
Images
by
Hulleah
Tsinhnahjinnie
(Seminole-Muscogee-Dine)
portray
Native
people-marked
as
women,
yet
open
to
more
gendered
readings-wearing
traditional
regalia
in
or
near
urbanized
landscapes.
In
"Hin-mut-toe-ta-li-ka-tsut
(Thunder
Clouds
Going
over
Mountains),"
a
Native
woman
in
traditional
dress
sits
astride
a
horse
grazing
against
a
backdrop
of
rolling
hills
that
stretch
to
the
horizon,
while
intercut
by
a
crowded
freeway.
Among
many
possible
readings,
I
mark
the

29
narrowed
background
motion
of
cars
articulating
the
subject's
glance
behind
and
the
horse's
potential
movement
into
a
broad
landscape
to
suggest
prior
and
sustained
mobility
against
the
time-space
of
colonial
modernity.
Tsinhnahjinnie
disrupts
the
tradition/modernity
split
by
portraying
Native
women
asserting
subjectivity
by
linking
modern
mobility
to
a
sustained
relationship
to
national
culture.
Whether
traditions
are
landed
behind
or
before
them,
or
right
where
they
now
stand,
the
woman
and
horse
mark
a
capacity
to
remain
linked
to
them
while
traversing
incompletely
settled
lands
near,
but
not
within,
the
routes
of
colonial
discipline.
A
relationship
of
travel
to
ancestral
emplacement
also
opens
the
book's
second
section,
"Gay
American
Indians
Today."
Here,
Hall
begins
a
commentary
on
Native
gay
men
by
invoking
the
Shoshone-Bannock
reservation
where
he
lives.
He
says
that
while
this
land
"is
a
harsh
place
...
of
temperature
extremes
and
a
difficult
life,"
after
many
travels
he
chose
to
return
to
where
he
had
been
raised
by
his
grandmother
as
one
of
the
old
peoples'
children'..
having
been
taught
the
knowledge,
traditions,
songs,
and
lifeways
of
the
tribe."
Here
where
his
people
long
have
lived,

there
is
something
that
exists
for
an
Indian
person
nowhere
else:
the
sense
of
belonging,
of
family
and
of
the
land.
You
are
not
only
a
person,
alone,
but
an
extension
of
a
family
and
a
group
of
people,
a
'tribe,'
that
has
existed
before
the
written
word.25

Hall
is
not
saying
that
we
should
all
go
'back
to
the
blanket'
or
return
to
the
reservation.
But
somehow,
there
should
be
a
blending
of
the
old
with
the
new,"
so
"gay
Indians
today"
can
realize
"respect"
for
themselves
and
one
another
in
"a
resurgence
of
that
old
pride
and
knowledge
of
place"
(104).
If
for
Hall,
place
is
an
ancestral
and
tribal
location,
he
and
other
contributors
also
name
it
as
the
place
of
Native
gay
community,
as
a
bordercrossing
activity
that
recalls
the
many
landed
traditions
of
Native
nations
wherever
Native
gay

30
people
may
go.

Given
the
era
when
Living
the
Spirit
appeared-in
the
wake
of
Grahn's
work
and
other
studies
of
the
berdache-the
contributions
are
notable
for
not
affirming
white
queer
desires
to
claim
Indigenous
sexual
or
spiritual
nature.
One
potential
link
to
them
appears
in
the
introductory
poem
by
Paula
Gunn
Allen
(Laguna),
Some
Like
Indians
Endure."
This
poem
resonates
with
Another
Mother
Tongue
and
the
San
Francisco
lesbian-feminist
communities
in
which
Allen
and
Grahn
participated,
even
as
it
invokes
lesbian
collectivity
to
enable
a
theory
of
Native
lesbian
resistance.26
The
poem
invites
the
reader
to
understand
"dykes"
as
having
lived
and
suffered
like
"Indians,"
in
that
they
used
to
live
as
tribes"
and
were
"massacred,"
but
"always
came
back."27
As
in
The
Sacred
Hoop,
Allen
adapts
qualities
of
a
white
lesbian-feminist
story
of
matriarchal
roots
to
link
ancient
Europe
to
the
Americas
as
Indigenous
sites
opposed
to
heteropatriarchy,
so
as
to
affirm
the
traditional
respect
and
power
accorded
to
women
and
lesbians
among
Native
people.
I
agree
with
Jace
Weaver
and
Lisa
Tatonetti
in
reading
Allen
as
affirming
a
decolonizing
positionality
for
Native
women
and
lesbians
that
refuses
colonial
appropriation.28
Nevertheless,
given
that
indigenizing
lesbians
opens
the
book
in
a
way
that
white
lesbians
or
other
nonNatives
could
connect
to
their
own
lives,
it
bears
noting
that
the
book's
subsequent
contributions
do
not
repeat
the
poem's
theme
and,
at
times,
markedly
displace
it,
as
when
Chrystos
(Menominee)
offers
a
scathing
dismissal
of
cultural
appropriation
in
her
poem
"Today
Was
a
Bad
Day
like
TB."29
Allen's
poem
might
be
better
read
as
addressing
a
Native
audience,
as
the
book
suggests,
in
that
it
asserts
that
Native
lesbians
and
gays
have
belonged
to
their
nations
throughout
the
past
and
that
they
endure
today
because
their
nationality
(Indian)
and
gender
and
sexuality
(dyke)
are
inseparable.

Nevertheless,
Living
the
Spirit
forms
a
strong
association
with
white
queer

31
desires
by
adapting
them
to
its
self-determining
project.
The
first
hardcover
edition
reprints
as
its
frontispiece
and
on
the
back
cover
Grahn's
entire
statement
beginning
The
day
I
saw
a
poster
declaring
the
existence
of
an
organization
of
Gay
American
Indians..."
Bookending
Living
the
Spirit
in
this
way
may
seem
to
invite
reading
the
text
and
GAI
as
consonant
with
Grahn's
desires,
or
as
meant
to
satisfy
them.
However,
given
that
the
contributors
do
not
discuss
the
quotation,
it
appears
instead
as
one
possible
point
of
entry
into
a
distinctive
text.
St.
Martin's
Press
originally
advertised
the
book
for
sale
to
the
very
gay
and
lesbian
readers
prepped
to
consume
Native
culture
as
representing
their
roots.
GAI
hired
as
the
book's
coordinating
editor
Will
Roscoe,
whose
analyses
of
Native
histories
reflected
his
responsible
relationship
to
GAI
in
this
book
and
to
the
Zuni
nation
in
his
The
Znni
Man-
Woman
(1991).
Yet
Roscoe
later
wrote
texts
on
queer
spirituality
that
invited
nonNative
queer
people
to
adopt
Native
culture
as
part
of
their
own
spiritual
nature.30
Decisions
by
St.
Martin's
Press
or
by
Roscoe
to
market
Living
the
Spirit
to
gay
and
lesbian
non-Natives
might
explain
why
Grahn's
words
were
featured.
But
I
am
more
interested
in
their
potential
resonance
with
the
book's
contributors,
who
appear
to
engage
with
them,
even
if
not
explicitly.
When
GAI
was
new,
the
non-Natives
who
paid
it
most
heed-Roscoe,
Katz,
Grahn-were
white
people
acting
within
long
histories
of
adapting
Native
culture
to
gay
and
lesbian
liberation.
Insofar
as
GAI
members
engaged
them,
it
showed
their
ability
to
adapt
non-Native
desires
to
their
own
ends.
To
repeat,
both
GAI
and
Living
the
Spirit
addressed
Native
queer
people
by
highlighting
historical
ties
to
Native
traditions
so
that
they
might
transform
their
own
and
their
peoples'
subjugation
to
colonial
heteropatriarchy
from
within
a
transnational
Native
movement
that
remained
distinct
from
nonNative
queer
politics.
Living
the
Spirit
was
the
first
book
to
quote
Grahn
to
a
Native
queer
audience.
Thus,
the
words
of
a
prominent
lesbian
writer
could
be
seen
to
affirm
the
impact
of
Gay
American
Indians
on
gay
and

32
lesbian
politics,
reinforcing
the
value
of
the
group's
telling
its
story
in
its
own
words.

Grahn's
words
also
could
be
adapted
to
GAI's
own
goals.
Cameron
and
Burns
defended
Native
gays
and
lesbians
to
Native
communities
by
arguing
that
their
societies
(to
quote
Grahn)
"once
picked
them
for
the
task
of
naming,
healing,
prediction,
leadership,
and
teaching
because
they
displayed
characteristics"
that
Native
people
in
Western
terms
now
"call
gay."
Although
Grahn
was
addressing
non-Natives,
her
words,
in
this
context,
have
the
different
effect
of
inviting
solidarity
among
Native
peoples
in
opposing
colonial
heteropatriarchy.
Most
importantly,
no
contributors
address
her
claim
that
Native
traditions
bequeath
to
non-Native
gay
men
and
lesbians
"positions
of
social
power
in
history
and
ritual
among
people
all
over
the
globe"
because
"Gay
is
a
universal
quality."
If
Allen
potentially
intimates
such
a
story,
even
she
does
not
invite
its
extrapolations,
but
locates
non-Native
lesbians
in
solidarity
with
Native
peoples.
For
Grahn,
non-Natives
already
embody
a
queer
indigeneity
that
can
liberate
queer
settlers
on
Native
lands.
Native
activists
may
adapt
this
language
to
claim
forms
of
historical
and
contemporary
leadership
in
their
nations
while
forging
transnational
alliances
for
decolonization.
As
meanings
that
shift
across
distinct
yet
relational
locations
in
a
settler
society,
these
readings
indicate
that
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
arise
diversely
within
the
power-laden
intimacies
of
conversation.

Relational
Locations:
Ethnography
and
History
of
Queer
Politics

This
book
explains
narrative
relationships
among
queer
subjects
by
situating
them
within
ethnographic
and
historical
accounts
of
U.S.
queer
politics.
My
involvement
in
northern
California
queer
movements
in
the
1980s
and
1990s
produced
an
initial
ethnographic
study
of
them.
That
work
grew
into
a
broader
historical
account
of
U.S.
queer
politics
as
non-Native
by
comparison

33
to
the
histories
of
Native
queer
politics
documented
by
Native
activists.
This
research
path
responded
to
anticolonial,
transnational,
and
Indigenous
feminist
criticism,
which,
as
a
scholar
in
women's
and
gender
studies,
I
apply
to
queer
anthropology
to
transform
its
colonial
legacies.

A
persistent
form
of
storytelling
about
indigeneity
in
late-twentiethcentury
U.S.
gender/sexual
politics
sparked
my
inquiry
into
its
conditions
and
effects.
As
that
politics
shifted
among
lesbian/gay
and
LGBT
coalitions,
radical
queer
politics
that
challenged
homonormativity,
and
the
adoption
of
queer
as
an
"umbrella"
term
for
minority
rights,
I
recurrently
heard
participants
tell
that
Native
American
societies
historically
honored
people
like
themselves
with
social
esteem
and
spiritual
gifts.
This
story
promised
them
a
sexual
nature,
an
authentic
culture,
or
both
simultaneously,
while
enabling
them
to
claim
forms
of
cultural
belonging
through
ancient
roots.
While
the
terms
in
the
story
shifted
once
berdache
was
displaced
by
TwoSpirit,
cisgender
gay
men
remained
central
within
them,
as
if
they
were
also
descriptive
of
women
and
trans
people;
and
stories
centering
trans
people
reframed
similar
sources
to
different
ends.
Historians
might
reference
these
stories
to
Walter
Williams's
The
Spirit
and
the
Flesh
(1986)
or
Leslie
Feinberg's
Transgender
Warriors
(1996),
but
I
encountered
them
in
classrooms,
bookstores,
political
activism,
theater
productions,
and
friendship
networks
that
preceded
publication
of
these
books.
Whether
people
agreed
or
disagreed
with
these
stories,
their
recurrence
kept
the
question
of
Native
history
central
to
the
determination
of
queer
truths.

My
research
began
in
the
mid-1990s
as
an
ethnography
of
how
such
storytelling
in
U.S.
queer
politics
articulated
multiracial
communities
and
antiracist
activism.
I
engaged
social
networks
already
linked
to
my
life
in
northern
California
and
nationally
by
asking
how
stories
about
indigeneity
formed
utopian
narratives
that
attempted
to
unify
queer
communities
across

34
their
differences.
I
noted
the
tension
between
a
promise
in
such
stories
to
heal
racism
and
the
evidence
that
racism
persisted
among
their
narrators.
Although
I
sought
at
the
time
to
pursue
an
antiracist
queer
account
of
colonial
discourse
in
solidarity
with
queer
of
color
activists,
it
soon
became
clear
that
the
stories
I
examined
exceeded
this
scope
and
also
required
a
targeting
of
queer
antiracism.
In
the
1990s,
queers
of
color
and
their
white
antiracist
queer
allies
critiqued
queer
movements
that
represented
their
"community"
as
a
multiracial
and
global
yet
unitary
groupnotably
when
those
movements
sought
to
"include"
a
"diversity"
within
otherwise
white
middle-class
spaces.
Antiracist
activists
challenged
queer
racism,
economic
inequality,
and
imperialism
by
critiquing
how
white
middleclass
queers
linked
their
liberation
to
acceptance
within
their
own
racialized
class
and
state.
But
such
efforts
were
stymied
when
queer
movement
leaders
agreed
with
critics
to
oppose
inequalities
by
arguing
that
their
work
had
already
bridged
them:
with
a
queer
culture
linking
queers
to
one
another
more
than
to
any
other
group;
with
a
queer
history
linking
all
queers
across
time;
or
within
a
queer
world
on
a
global
scale.
These
claims
readily
invoked
as
key
evidence
Native
American
history
and
extrapolated
it
onto
Indigenous
peoples
worldwide.
Yet
if
activists
ever
criticized
such
claims
as
being
"racist,"
they
failed
to
comprehend
fully
what
they
confronted:
for,
invoking
Native
roots
for
queer
culture
and
history
already
presented
a
means
to
mediate
racism;
and
if
critics
sought
to
address
racism
by
working
for
"inclusion"
of
queers
of
color,
that
could
help
to
diversify
the
very
politics
where
those
stories
still
circulated.

This
book
aims
to
answer
this
conundrum,
by
shifting
my
ethnography
of
queer
spaces
where
I
lived
to
studying
their
formation
in
relation
to
the
spaces
they
elided:
those
formed
by
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists.
My
shift
was
driven
by
a
recognition
that
I,
the
narrators
of
the
aforementioned
stories,
and
the
antiracist
movement
that
sought
to
disrupt
them
all
were
positioned
in
relation
to
Native
queer
people
as
non-Native.
In
retrospect,
it

35
became
clear
to
me
that
both
the
queer
"racism"
and
"antiracism"
I
had
known
arose
from
a
non-Native
relationship
to
imagining
indigeneity.
Yet
I
first
encountered
them
within
the
milieu
of
a
settler
society,
which
presumes
and
naturalizes
Native
people's
absence
or
disappearance.
NonNative
writers
such
as
Williams
and
Feinberg
popularized
Two-Spirit
people's
voices
even
as
Two-Spirit
activists
were
mobilizing
in
cities
like
San
Francisco,
Toronto,
and
New
York
and
in
rural
Native
communities,
all
of
which
made
Native
queer
people
seem
ubiquitous
in
late-twentieth-century
queer
politics.
Yet
this
was
happening
within
settler
societies,
where
queer
movements
functioned
without
the
participation
of
Native
people
even
though
many
members
felt
they
were
entitled
to
narrate
Native
history
as
their
own.
During
the
1990s,
I
met
different
stories
only
by
moving
outside
normatively
white
queer
politics
to
attend
to
Native
queer
activist
space,
including
women
of
color
feminist
spaces
where
Native
queer
women
provided
leadership.
Here
I
heard
very
different
stories
from
Native
narrators.
Many
claimed
a
relationship
to
traditions
of
gender
and
sexual
diversity
in
their
nations,
which
some
extended
to
include
all
Native
queer
people.
Others
argued
that
however
inspiring
tradition
might
be,
their
Native
queer
identities
today
were
most
important.
These
claims
were
not
exclusive
but
interlinked.
Amid
their
differences,
I
heard
Native
narrators
express
a
desire
to
join
with
and
lead
their
peoples
in
a
collective
struggle
for
decolonization.31
Throughout
the
1990s,
Native
queer
people
were
defining
their
lives
autonomously,
practicing-to
borrow
Audra
Simpson's
phrase-an
"ethnographic
refusal"
of
non-Native
anthropological
or
queer
inquiry.
My
research
responded
to
this
politicization
of
anthropological
knowledge
by
what
might
by
called
an
"ethnographic
repudiation"
of
white
queer
ethnography
of
Native
people.
In
its
place,
I
pursued
ethnographic
and
historical
study
of
the
non-Native
queer
spaces
where
I
lived
and
I
increasingly
responded
directly
to
Native
queer
activist
critiques.

The
project
thus
became
comparative
of
non-Native
and
Native
queer

36
politics
once
it
was
repositioned,
politically
and
methodologically,
in
relationship
to
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists.
I
traced
historical
ties
between
non-Native
and
Native
queer
politics
in
literature
by
Native
activists
now
housed
in
libraries
and
archives.
I
requested
and
received
critical
engagement
from
Native
queer
activists
across
the
United
States
and
Canada,
and
they
interviewed
me
about
my
work.
Much
of
the
literature
I
cited
had
received
little
or
no
attention
in
earlier
writing
by
non-Natives,
despite
its
importance
in
the
historical
growth
of
Native
queer
and
TwoSpirit
activism.
I
thus
became
a
non-Native
critic
who
was
engaging
Native
activists
against
colonial
methodologies
that
would
frame
the
Native
activist
texts
I
discuss
as
"discoveries"
by
a
non-Native
scholar.
Instead,
I
cite
Native
queer
activist
texts
as
a
distinctive
body
of
critical
theory
to
which
queer
non-Natives
already
were
intellectually
and
politically
accountable,
and
to
which
my
now-
comparative
and
historical
study
of
non-Native
queer
politics
offered
a
response.
The
material
in
this
book
in
fact
triangulates
two
readings-my
own
and
those
shared
by
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists-to
critically
examine
non-Native
queer
politics,
even
as
my
reading
remains
responsible
to
Native
activists.

My
approach
decidedly
departs
from
the
gay
and
lesbian
anthropology
of
berdache-not
to
separate
from
its
history,
but
to
traverse
it
with
a
critical
difference.
During
the
late
twentieth
century,
gay
and
lesbian
anthropologists
revisited
prior
work
on
berdache
or
conducted
new
research
with
the
intention
of
affirming
Native
gender
and
sexual
diversity.
Yet
that
work
also
served
to
advance
their
own
non-Native
gender
and
sexual
politics,
and
reinforced
their
anthropological
authority
to
determine
Native
truth
while
leaving
their
desire
for
it
unexamined.
By
investigating
the
non-Native
and,
most
centrally,
white
queer
subjects
that
produced
and
consumed
berdache,
I
displace
the
distancing
effects
of
classic
anthropology
with
critical
insider
research
of
constituencies
in
which
I
am
already
located.
I
then
cite
Native

37
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
as
critical
theorists
of
their
own
lives
who
require
no
anthropological
translation
and
whose
claims
still
retain
the
power
to
interrupt
it.
My
project
thus
engages
anthropology
by
interpreting
the
effects
of
anthropological
knowledge
in
queer
cultures
and
politics.
Certain
qualities
of
ethnography
are
important
to
it,
such
as
its
recurrent
return
to
the
social
geography
of
the
San
Francisco
Bay
Area
that
produced
intertwined
histories
of
Native
and
gender/sexual
politics.32
I
evaluate
the
anthropology
of
berdache
as
a
legacy
of
the
Society
of
Lesbian
and
Gay
Anthropologists
(SOLGA),
which
provided
crucial
support
to
my
work,
and
is
now
known
as
the
Association
for
Queer
Anthropology
(AOA),
committed
to
studying
sexuality
and
gender
in
context
of
studies
of
race,
class,
nationality,
colonization,
and
globalization.
AQA
is
accommodating
an
interdisciplinary
approach
in
anthropology
that
regards
queerness
less
as
an
object
of
representation
and
more
as
an
action
to
be
taken
on
the
field.
Queering
anthropology
may
denaturalize
and
destabilize
disciplinary
norms,
which
this
book
contributes
to
by
unsettling
anthropology's
settler
colonial
formation
and
holding
it
accountable
to
the
interdisciplinary
and
political
work
of
decolonizing
queer
knowledge
production.

I
agree
with
anthropologists
who
question
colonial
desires
for
Native
history,
as,
for
instance,
in
Towle
and
Morgan's
critique
of
the
"third
gender"
concept
in
U.S.
transgender
politics
or
Sue-Ellen
Jacobs's
response
to
Two-
Spirit
criticism
of
gay
and
lesbian
anthropology.
33
But
my
work
differs
by
not
suggesting
that
such
desires
will
be
resolved
by
producing
a
better
anthropology
of
Native
culture.
I
focus
not
on
Native
or
non-Native
people
but
on
the
genealogies
of
settler
colonialism
that
produce
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
in
relationship.
I
examine
non-Native
tales
of
Native
truth-anthropological
or
popular,
romantic
or
objectivist,
colonial
or
anticolonial-as
claims
conditioned
by
the
persistent
power
of
settler
colonialism.
I
compare
them
to
Native
narratives
that
address
non-Natives

38
without
beginning
or
ending
in
non-Native
logics.
The
interrelated
quality
of
these
narratives
becomes
apparent
even
as
the
capacity
of
non-Native
narratives
to
contain
Native
truth
is
displaced.
Narrating
non-Native
and
Native
queer
projects
in
conversation
thus
inspires
a
new
theory
of
settler
colonialism
and
resistance
to
its
power.

Theorizing
Settler
Colonialism
and
Queer
Modernities

Theories
of
settler
colonialism
in
Native
studies
and
Indigenous
feminist
and
queer
critique
inspire
my
argument
that
modern
sexuality
produces
non-
Natives
in
relation
to
Native
people
in
the
multiracial
space
of
a
white
settler
society.
I
hold
queer
theories
particularly
accountable
to
the
study
of
settler
colonialism,
in
response
to
the
critical
implications
of
Native
queer
modernities
modeled
by
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activisms.

Settlers
naturalize
their
presence
on
Native
land
as
rightful,
final
occupants
so
that
the
question
of
conquest
can
appear
to
be
"settled."
Naturalization
addresses
settlers'
"illegitimacy"-at
times,
their
"central
dilemma,"
in
Amy
den
Ouden's
words-by
asserting
their
presence
on
settled
land
as
incontestable.34
Settler
colonialism
is
naturalized
whenever
conquest
or
displacement
of
Native
peoples
is
ignored
or
appears
necessary
or
complete,
and
whenever
subjects
are
defined
by
settler
desires
to
possess
Native
land,
history,
or
culture.
Settler
colonialism
thus
must
be
denaturalized
not
only
in
social
and
political
spaces
but
also
in
definitions
and
experiences
of
subjectivity.
By
more
fully
understanding
its
naturalization,
critiques
may
destabilize
it
within
settler
societies
and
all
spaces
that
those
societies
inform.

I
explain
settler
colonialism's
naturalization
by
evaluating
proposals
of
Native
disappearance
and
settler
replacement.
Patrick
Wolfe
defines
settler
colonialism
along
the
logic
of
elimination,"
which
seeks
the
erasure
of
Native
peoples
to
facilitate
their
replacement
by
settlers.35
Recognizing
that

39
genocide
studies
after
Raphael
Lemkin
correlates
genocide
to
extermination,
Wolfe
argues
that
genocidal
practices
are
among
the
techniques
that
may
serve
the
logic
of
elimination.
He
notes
that
settlers
may
pursue
the
elimination
of
Native
peoples
by
trying
not
to
destroy
but
to
produce
life,
through
the
amalgamation
of
Native
peoples
into
settler
society
and
the
narrowing
or
erasure
of
claims
on
Native
nationality.
For
instance,
blood
quantum
and
other
racial
and
colonial
methods
for
determining
Native
identity
enact
narratives
of
"dilution,"
anticipating
Native
people's
disappearance,
and
define
self-identified
Native
people
and
people
of
mixed
Indigenous
heritage
as
"non-Native."36
Many
Native
studies
scholars
use
"geno
cide"
precisely
to
name
this
array
of
destructive
and
productive
practices.
I
affirm
such
usage
even
as
I
appreciate
Wolfe's
use
of
the
term,
which
in
its
breadth
also
references
a
method
by
settlers
to
replace
Native
people
by
naturalizing
their
own
proliferation.
Jean
O'Brien
explains
how
settlers
founded
colonial
New
England
in
narratives
of
the
inevitable
disappearance
of
Native
people,
in
an
extenuated,
conflictual,
and
incomplete
process
that
persists
even
as
New
England
Native
peoples
continue
to
resist
erasure
Dale
Turner
evaluates
the
erasure
of
Native
peoples
within
Canadian
"White
Paper
liberalism,"
in
which
regressive
Native
identity
is
contrasted
to
the
progressive
individuality
and
modern
freedoms
conferred
by
attempts
to
re-create
Native
peoples
as
citizens
of
the
settler
state.38
Native
studies
scholars
expose
these
ruses
of
settler
colonialism's
logic
of
elimination
by
arguing
the
integrity
and
renewal
of
Indigenous
governance
and
Indigenous
relationships
to
land,
language,
and
peoplehood,
as
these
trace
"intellectual
histories"
(in
Robert
Warrior's
term)
that
displace
settler
authority
while
affirming
Native
modernities
as
creative
assertions
of
survival
and
resistance.39

Philip
Deloria
and
Renee
Bergland
point
out
that
when
white
settlers
in
the
United
States
proclaim
civilization's
advance,
they
also
confirm
their

40
(il)legitimacy
by
resituating
the
Native
peoples
they
(seem
to)
supplant
as
part
of
their
own
histories
and
inner
lives.
Bergland
examines
the
appearance
of
Native
people
as
ghosts
of
inspiration
within
narratives
of
white
settler
lives
and
society.
Deloria
traces
how
white
settlers
adapt
indigeneity's
putative
opposition
to
civilization
through
"Indian
impersonation,"
which
performs
opposition
to
settler
rule
as
well
as
the
authority
to
claim
it
for
themselves
as
settler
subjects.
In
both
accounts,
settlers
supplant
and
incorporate
indigeneity
to
attain
settler
subjectivity.
Racialized
by
white
supremacy,
these
acts
appear
civilizational-vanquishing
Native
adversaries
mirrors
calls
to
civilized
people
to
control
primitive
drives.
Yet
they
are
also
nostalgic
for
an
indigeneity
that
modern
people
must
transcend,
even
while
incorporating
it
as
part
of
their
history.
In
a
settler
society,
then,
the
very
demand
upon
settlers
to
replace
Natives
simultaneously
incites
white
settler
desires
to
be
intimate
with
the
Native
authenticity
that
their
modernity
presumably
replaces.
Indigeneity's
civilizational
replacement
thus
is
complementary
to
the
settler
pursuit
of
primitivism.
Impersonating
indigeneity
and
believing
in
colonial
modernity
are
noncontradictory
acts,
given
that
settlers
preserve
Native
authenticity
as
a
history
they
must
possess
in
order
to
transcend.
If
Indian
impersonation
seems
to
be
an
appropriation
of
Native
culture,
Deloria
and
Bergland
argue
that
white
settlers
in
fact
perform
an
indigeneity
they
imagine
from
their
desires
to
belong
to
stolen
land.
Nostalgic
quests
for
roots
that
modern
nationals
transcend
also
defined
the
growth
of
modern
European
nationalism
more
generally;
but
in
settler
societies,
this
path
articulated
the
difference
of
Native
peoples
whom
settlers
must
supplant,
incorporate,
and
transcend
in
order
to
become
modern
subjects
of
a
settler
nation.40
Thus,
settler
colonialism
is
naturalized
not
only
in
Native
people's
seeming
"disappearance"
from
a
modern,
settled
landscape,
but
also
in
indigeneity's
recurrent
appearance
within
and
as
settler
subjectivity.
Whether
erasing
or
performing
indigeneity,
omitting
or
celebrating
it,
settlers
practice
settlement
by
turning
Native
land

41
and
culture
into
an
inheritance
granting
them
knowledge
and
ownership
of
themselves.
If
settlement
thereby
presumes
Native
authenticity's
disappearance,
it
does
not
follow
that
Native
people
are
absent
from
representation.
James
Cox
observes
that
narratives
encoded
by
Native
disappearance
mark
the
presence
of
indigeneity,
in
that
the
persistence
of
Native
peoples
surviving
and
resisting
colonization
remains
outside
the
frame,
inspiring
settler
narratives
to
deny
their
existence
and
reinforce
their
erasure.41
Deloria,
Bergland,
and
Cox
thus
show
that
within
the
racial
and
national
frame
of
white
settler
colonialism,
settlers
and
Natives
are
produced
in
relation
to
each
other
when
the
former
arise
as
settlers,
naturalizing
an
emplacement
produced
through
their
own
and
others'
displacement
by
narrating
Native
elimination.

These
analyses
explain
white-supremacist
settler
colonialism
once
we
recognize
that
a
normative
relation
of
"Natives"
to
"settlers"
articulates
a
multiracial
and
transnational
settler
society
and
the
locations
within
it
of
non-
Native
peoples
of
color.
Histories
of
white
settler
colonialism
and
its
logic
of
elimination
in
the
Americas
and
the
Pacific
must
theorize
its
coproduction
with
the
transatlantic
slave
trade
and
the
African
diaspora,
franchise
colonialism
in
Asia
and
Africa,
and
global
migrations
of
indentured
labor,
all
of
which
inform
the
globalization
of
European
capital
and
empire.42
This
context
suggests
that
the
relationality
of
"settler"
to
"Native"
in
a
white
settler
society
has
the
effect
of
excluding
non-Native
people
of
color
from
the
civilizational
modernity
that
white
settlers
seek
when
they
appear
to
eliminate
Native
peoples
only
to
elide
the
subjugation
of
non-Native
people
of
color
on
stolen
land.
In
the
United
States,
African
diasporic
peoples,
migrant
Asian,
Latin
American,
African,
and
Middle
Eastern
laborers,
and
conquered
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
peoples
are
located
distinctly
from
the
settler
status
inherited
by
representatives
of
Anglo
whiteness-even
if
they
might
accede
to
that
status
if
the
interpretation
of
their
racialization
changes.
For
instance,
the

42
relationality
of
"Native"
and
"settler"
invokes
intimacies
among
Native
and
African
diasporic
peoples
in
opposition
to
and
in
complicity
with
settlement:
as
Native
peoples
rejected,
or
practiced,
African
enslavement;
as
free
blacks
participated
in
settler
conquest
or
joined
Natives
in
resisting;
and
as
Native
and
black
peoples
had
to
debate
their
ancestral
relationships
in
relation
to
the
hegemony
of
a
white-supremacist
color
line.
Yet,
while
conditioned
by
these
complex
histories,
solidarity
and
kinship
ties
among
Native
and
black
peoples
have
not
been
erased
as
a
potential
site
for
challenging
white-supremacist
settler
colonialism.43

Scholars
debate
the
degree
of
accountability
of
white
people
or
people
of
color
for
the
status
and
power
of
"settlers"
in
relation
to
Native
peoples
in
white
settler
societies.
Bonita
Lawrence
and
Haunani-Kay
Trask
have
called
on
non-Native
people
of
color
in
white
settler
societies
to
ask
themselves
how
their
histories
of
racial
subjugation
and
antiracist
resistance
might
be
compatible
with
settler
colonial
elimination
of
Native
peoples
and
their
sovereignty.44
Nandita
Sharma
and
Cynthia
Wright
respond
to
Lawrence
by
citing
colonial
and
postcolonial
studies
on
the
colonization
of
diasporic
peoples
of
color
and
the
perpetuation
of
racism
and
genocide
by
postcolonial
nationalism,
and
propose
that
colonial
legacies
can
be
disrupted
by
cosmopolitan
subjects
forming
multiracial,
transnational
"commons"
in
the
local
and
global
spaces
they
now
inhabit.45
Sharma
and
Wright
transpose
critiques
of
the
imperial
nation-state
and
postcolonial
cultural
nationalism
onto
Indigenous
peoples
and
settler
societies
without
sufficiently
considering
literature
on
Indigenous
decolonization,
which
disturbs
the
colonial
modern
state-form
and
presents
alternative
forms
of
nationality
that
displace
colonial,
racialist,
and
heteropatriarchal
domination.46
They
also
do
not
address
how
diasporic
scholars
of
color
and
white
antiracist
allies
are
accountable
to
the
struggles
of
Native
nations,
including
how
a
white
settler
academy
empowers
them
to
argue
that
non-Natives
are
not
settlers
or
that
Native
people
should

43
not
defend
their
nations.
Nevertheless,
I
agree
with
them
that
to
say
that
all
non-Natives
are
settlers
may
fail
to
explain
how
settler
colonialism
conditions
non-Natives
by
"race"
or
migrant/immigrant
status,
while
stymieing
efforts
to
link
Native,
diaspora,
and
critical
race
studies
in
defending
Native
decolonization.47
I
find
most
compelling
the
self-reflective
assertions
by
non-
Native
people
of
color
of
their
status,
role,
or
power
as
settlers-as
when
Asian
American
allies
of
the
Hawaiian
sovereignty
movement
critique
participation
by
Asians
in
U.S.
settler
colonization
of
Hawai'i,
or
when
diasporic
Palestinians
voice
solidarity
with
Indigenous
Americans
who
also
ally
with
Palestinians
in
struggle
against
Israeli
settlement
of
Palestinian
lands.48
More
such
analysis
is
needed
within
diaspora
and
critical
race
studies
to
displace
accounts
of
colonization
and
resistance
that
normalize
whiteness.
White
radicals
often
fail
to
note
the
racial
specificity
of
their
settler
colonial
inheritance.
If
they
project
their
experience
into
theorizing
the
responsibility
of
non-Natives
to
demonstrate
Indigenous
solidarity,
they
may
reproduce
white
supremacy
by
not
considering
how
people
of
color
negotiate
settler
colonialism-perhaps
within
Indigenous
solidarity
that
white
people
will
not
share.

My
project
shifts
questions
of
status-such
as
"Who
is
the
ask
instead
how
subjects
are
produced
by
social
processes:
"Who,
under
what
conditions,
inherits
the
power
to
represent
or
enact
settler
colonialism?"
It
thus
responds
to
political
demands
that
subjects
who
inherit
the
power
of
settler
colonialism
challenge
their
inheritance,
which
I
do
by
investigating
and
clarifying
the
genealogies
through
which
such
subjects
might
arise.
For
instance,
white-
supremacist
settler
colonialism
distinguishes
"Native"
from
"settler"
so
as
to
naturalize
whiteness
in
teleologies
of
modernity,
civilization,
and
citizenship
that
predict
Indigenous
elimination
and
settler
replacement.
White
subjects
may
appear-if
their
locations
by
nation,
class,
gender,
sexuality,
and
disability
can
be
made
to
match-as
the
settlers
differentiated
from
the
Natives
whose
lands
and
histories
they
inherit.
Yet
this
definition
is
troubled
immediately
by

44
the
logic
of
elimination's
having
operated
precisely
via
amalgamation.
Lawrence
and
Malinda
Maynor
Lowery
explain
that
the
Native
identities
of
mixed-blood
Native
people
are
invalidated
by
their
racialization
as
white
or
black
through
the
policing
of
Native
status
and
the
redrawing
of
the
color
line.49
Maria
Saldafia-Portillo
further
explains
how
mixed
Indigenous
ancestry
is
produced
by
national
projects
of
mestizaje
to
replace
specific
Indigenous
identifications
or
land
claims,
and
that
whether
conforming
to
white
supremacy
or
indigenizing
mestizos/as
such
projects
can
remain
in
tension
with
Native
communities
that
retain
a
traditional
collective
identity.
11
In
light
of
these
complexities,
we
cannot
assume
that
all
who
are
forcibly
aligned
with
whiteness,
blackness,
or
niestizaje
are
"non-Native,"
even
though
their
lives
may
be
meaningfully
defined
by
a
lived
difference
from
Native
nationality
and
collectivity.

The
logic
of
elimination
defines
"Native"
as
an
ever-disappearing
location
that
includes
or
excludes
Native
people
as
this
benefits
conquest.
To
presume
an
absolute
distinction
of
"Native"
from
"non-Native"
invariably
misses
this
historically
porous
definition.
At
the
same
time,
even
subjects
structurally
opposed
by
racism
may
recognizably
share
status
as
non-Native
in
relation
to
the
difference
of
indigeneity
in
a
settler
society.
Racialization
under
white
supremacy
will
grant
non-Natives
distinct,
often
mutually
exclusive,
abilities
to
represent
or
enact
settler
colonial
power.
But
all
nonNatives
still
will
differ
in
their
experiences
of
settler
colonialism
from
the
experiences
of
Native

The
logic
of
elimination
defines
a
normative
relationality
of
"Native"
to
"settler"
precisely
by
positioning
non-Native
people
of
color
outside
a
power
relation
that
all
defined
as
Native
are
made
to
inhabit.
Native
people
become
marked
within
the
power
relation
that
purportedly
eliminates
them,
in
direct
relation
to
how
non-Native
people
of
color
are
absented
from
the
very
power
relation
producing
them
as
racialized
populations
in
a
white
settler
society
on

45
"emptied"
land.
My
reading
of
white
settler
colonization
triangulates
normative
statuses
assigned
to
whiteness,
indigeneity,
and
non-Native
peoples
of
color,
while
noting
how
histories
of
amalgamation,
mixed
heritage,
and
mestizaje
cross
their
putative
borders.
I
then
explain
distinctions
among
Natives
and
non-Natives
by
referring
to
the
work
of
sovereign
Native
nations
and
their
members
within
alliance
politics.
Native
nations
are
defining
and
defending
sovereign
distinctions
from
non-Native
peoples
and
societies
by
producing
innovative
theories
of
alliance:
to
bridge
differences
of
status
defining
membership;
to
embrace
differences
in
the
community
such
as
"race,"
gender,
and
sexuality;
to
link
varied
nations
transnationally;
and
to
connect
their
national
or
transnational
work
with
allied
non-Natives.
The
alliances
emerging
in
Native
activism
are
pursuing,
as
Andrea
Smith
notes,
"unlikely"
routes
to
ensure
survival
and
defend
sovereignty,
as
modeled
for
Smith
by
Indigenous
women
activists.52
I
focus
on
such
alliance
work
as
theorized
and
practiced
by
Native
queer,
Two-Spirit,
and
HIV/AIDS
activists,
which
Owo-Li
Driskill
and
Chris
Finley
argue
is
needed
both
to
bridge
the
diversity
of
Native
queer/Two-Spirit
communities
and
to
realign
their
communities
and
nations
in
struggle
against
heteropatriarchy.53
Formation
of
such
alliances
in
Native
politics
does
not
presume
that
those
it
joins
across
differences
are
wholly
distinct.
For
instance,
activist
responses
to
the
Arizona
anti-immigrant
law
SB1070
deepened
alliances
of
Tohono
O'odham
and
Chicano/a
activists
in
ways
that
respected
the
national
integrity
of
O'odham
people
and
lands,
facilitated
Indigenous
identification
among
Chicano/a
activists,
and
recognized
that
racial
profiling
of
"illegal
immigrants"
targeted
all
people
with
Indigenous
features.
As
a
result,
Tohono
O'odham
and
Chicano/a
solidarity
with
migrants
emerged
through
negotiating
distinct,
yet
linked,
Indigenous
heritage.54
When
my
analysis
addresses
the
difference
of
Native
nationality
as
it
troubles
settler
society
and
refracts
the
lives
of
non-
Natives,
I
intend
not
to
police
the
boundaries
of
Native
identity,
but
rather
to

46
focus
on
accounts
by
Native
people
that
demonstrate
how
their
lives
are
interdependent
and
bridge
the
differences
imposed
by
colonial
exclusion
and
domination.
The
national
and
transnational
models
of
alliance
by
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
emerge
as
projects
to
which
all
non-Native
queers
can
be
accountable,
in
contrast
to
settler
colonial
desires
for
a
relationship
to
indigeneity
outside
of
a
situated
politics
of
alliance.

In
sum,
in
a
multiracial,
transnational
white
settler
society,
the
relation
of
"Native"
to
"settler"
articulates
distinctions
of
Native
from
non-Native,
but
these
two
comparisons
are
neither
identical
nor
parallel.
The
teleological
binary
Native/settler
is
perpetually
complicated
by
the
nonbinary
relations
of
diverse
non-Natives
and
Native
peoples
across
commonalities
and
differences.
Nevertheless,
no
degree
of
complication
in
either
comparison
removes
the
meaningful
difference
indigeneity
continues
to
make
in
a
settler
society,
as
in
Native
sovereignty
struggles
and
national
and
transnational
Native
alliances.
If
settlers
ever
do
learn
who
they
are,
they
will
recognize
themselves
at
the
least
as
those
who
are
meant
to
replace.
Native
disappearance
haunts
settler
subjectivity
and
illuminates
all
cultures
and
politics
in
a
settler
society.
Regardless
of
whether
non-Natives
think
they
inherit
the
power
of
settler
colonialism,
all
can
ask
how
it
produces
them
in
roles
that
may
sustain
it
and
its
naturalization.

Queering
Colonial
Relationalities

Interdisciplinary
theory
of
settler
colonialism
rarely
entertains
the
degree
of
complexity
I
invite
while
defying
the
naturalization
of
settlement
by
centering
Native
people.
Among
theories
that
address
European
settler
colonialism
by
emphasizing
relations
with
Native
peoples,
one
long
in
circulation
is
Mary
Louise
Pratt's
"contact
zone"
indicating
a
power-laden
space
of
cultural
creativity
in
colonial
Pratt's
innovation
was
to
shift
colonial
studies
from
narrating
imperial
power
and
Native
subjection
to
focus
on
their
relational

47
formation,
while
highlighting
the
critical
agency
of
Native
peoples
and
contacts
in
which
Natives
influenced
colonists
while
colonists
relied
on
Natives
for
self-definition.
While
Pratt
acknowledged
the
diverse
racialization
of
colonial
situations,
her
term
often
is
used
to
reference
"Native/settler"
relations
without
explaining
the
multiracial
scope
of
settler
societies.
Nevertheless,
any
reflection
of
white
settler
logics
in
the
term-the
appearance
that
a
relation
of
disappearing
"Natives"
to
civilizational
white
"settlers"
defines
social
life-is
precisely
what
makes
"contact
zone"
useful
to
my
reading
of
the
settler
histories
of
modern
sexuality.

Inspired
by
Indigenous
feminist
and
queer
critiques
of
sexual
colonization,
and
with
the
United
States
as
my
context,
I
argue
that
modern
sexuality
arises
in
white
settler
society
as
a
"contact
zone,"
defined
by
attempting
to
replace
Native
kinship,
embodiment,
and
desire
with
the
hegemony
of
"settler
sexuality,"
or
the
heteropatriarchal
sexual
modernity
exemplary
of
white
settler
civilization.
I
adapt
Foucault's
history
of
sexuality
by
reading
"modern
sexuality"
as
the
array
of
discourses,
procedures,
and
institutions
that
arose
in
metropolitan
and
colonial
societies
to
distinguish
and
link
primitive
and
civilized
gender
and
sexuality,
while
defining
racial,
national,
gendered,
and
sexual
subjects
and
populations
in
biopolitical
relationship.
I
analyze
the
subjection
of
Native
societies
to
colonial
heteropatriarchy
as
a
proving
ground
for
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism,
which
defines
modern
sexuality
as
"contact"
between
queered
indigeneity
and
its
transcendence
by
settler
sexuality.
My
approach
affirms
the
work
of
Saidya
Hartman,
Allan
Punzalan
Isaac,
Eithne
Luibheid,
and
other
scholars
in
examining
the
formation
of
modern
sexuality
as
settler
sexuality
in
the
United
States
amid
the
terrorizing
racial
and
heteropatriarchal
regulation
of
diasporic
and
colonized
African,
Asian,
Latin
American,
and
Arab
and
Middle
Eastern
peoples,
including
mestizo/a
Latin
Americans
racialized
in
an
Anglo
context
beyond
normative
whiteness
or
authentic
indigeneitysb
Mindful
of
this
array
of
intersections,
I

48
focus
on
the
sexual
colonization
of
Native
peoples
as
a
key
site
through
which
settler
colonialism
conditions
the
diversely
racialized
subjects
produced
within
queer
modernities.

Indigenous
feminist
theorists
explain
settler
colonialism
as
sexual
colonization.
Andrea
Smith
theorizes
it
as
sexual
violence,
through
which
the
conquest
of
land
and
bodies
advances
heteropatriarchal
rule
over
Native
peoples
and
establishes
it
throughout
settler
society.57
Kim
Anderson,
Bonita
Lawrence,
and
Chris
Finley,
among
others,
explain
heteropatriarchy
as
a
genocidal
method
for
isolating,
dispersing,
and
eliminating
Native
peoples,
including
through
internalization
as
a
norm
of
discipline
and
violence
in
Native
communities.58
Indigenous
feminist
theorists
and
women's
movements
invite
decolonization
by
challenging
heteropatriarchy
as
a
colonial
legacy;
some
also
note
that
colonial
violence
targets
persons
marked
by
gender
or
sexual
diversity
so
as
to
queer
Indigenous
peoples
to
colonial
heteropatriarchal
rule.
Their
work
informs
Indigenous
queer
critiques
and
allied
work
in
queer
studies.59
Deborah
Miranda
explains
Spanish
conquest
in
California
as
defined
by
the
"extermination
of
the
joyas,"
a
process
Finley
links
to
the
genocidal
effects
of
colonial
biopower,
which
Mark
Rifkin
investigates
in
U.S.
state
efforts
to
produce
Native
peoples
as
heteronormative
private-property
owning
citizens
of
a
settler
nation.60
Owo-Li
Driskill
focuses
Indigenous
queer
critiques
through
an
"erotics
of
sovereignty"
to
answer
the
violences
of
heteropatriarchal
colonization
with
the
bodybased
and
collective
work
of
decolonization.61
Forty
years
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
organizing
in
the
United
States
and
Canada
anticipated
and
pursued
these
insights
by
recalling
memories
of
Indigenous
embodiment,
desire,
and
kinship
that
challenge
the
heteropatriarchal
logics
of
settler
modernity.
Anguksuar
Richard
LaFortune,
cofounder
of
American
Indian
Gays
and
Lesbians
(Minneapolis)
and
the
International
Two-Spirit
Gathering,
recognizes
Two-
Spirit
organizing
as
a
"movement,"
while
saying
that
"what
is
happening,

49
actually,
is
that
we
are
remembering
who
we
are
and
that
our
identities
can
no
longer
be
used
as
a
weapon
against
us."62
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
negotiating
colonial
discourses
join
Indigenous
queer
and
feminist
scholars
in
critiquing
heteropatriarchy
as
crucial
to
struggle
for
decolonization.

Andrea
Smith
and
Owo-Li
Driskill
argue
that
queer
theory
reproduces
the
violences
of
settler
colonialism
unless
these
are
examined
as
conditions
of
the
social
worlds
in
which
its
practitioners
live.63
Smith
and
Driskill
join
queer
of
color,
queer
diasporic,
and
queer/migration
critiques
in
regarding
all
queer
formations
as
conditioned
by
colonization,
racialization,
diaspora,
and
globalization.
But
they
also
demonstrate
how
theories
of
queer
temporality,
racialization,
and
diaspora
must
shift
to
address
settler
colonialism.
If
settler
colonialism
is
produced
by
processes
of
elimination
and
replacement
and
by
teleologies
of
modernity
and
civilization,
it
immediately
invites
theory
of
temporality.
Smith
goes
beyond
Lee
Edelman's
theory
of
queer
temporality
displacing
heteronormative
futurity
in
the
image
of
the
queer
child-one
Jose
Esteban
Munoz
evaluates
as
"always
already
white"-to
assert
that

an
indigenous
critique
must
question
the
logic
of
"no
future"
in
the
context
of
genocide,
where
Native
people
have
already
been
determined
by
settler
colonialism
to
have
no
future.
If
the
goal
of
queerness
is
to
challenge
the
reproduction
of
the
social
order,
then
the
Native
child
may
already
be
queered.64

Indigenous
feminist
and
queer
critics
explain
that
by
queering
Native
peoples
as
threats
whose
conquest
will
establish
colonial
heteropatriarchy,
canceling
the
future
of
the
Native
child
produces
the
future
of
white
settler
society
as
genocide.
Yet
Smith
notes
that
to
recall
what
was
queered
within
Native
society
itself
constitute
a
queer
critique
of
heteropatriarchy.

50
 Smith
and
Driskill
also
question
antiracist
and
diasporic
queer
theories
that
erase
Native
peoples.
If
queer
and
diaspora
theories
valorize
dislocation,
Smith
argues,
then
Native
peoples
will
appear
excessively
local
or
national
and,
hence,
insufficiently
queer.
Smith
answers
Gayatri
Gopinath's
assertion
that
"queerness
is
to
heterosexuality
as
diaspora
is
to
the
nation"
by
asking
if
"perhaps
we
can
understand
Indigenous
nationhood
as
already
queered."65
Driskill
argues
that
"Two-Spirit
critiques"
locate
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
as
productive,
if
not
central,
to
nationalist,
decolonial
agendas
...
not
[as]
an
assimilationist
move
but
a
move
against
the
colonial
powers
that
have
attempted
to
dissolve
or
restrain
Native
sovereignties."66
According
to
Driskill,
Native
queer
andTwo-Spirit
people
do
not
accommodate
and
reinforce
heteronormative
nations,
as
occurs
along
the
"autological"
mode
of
settler
citizenship
critiqued
by
Elizabeth
Povinelli,
or
the
postcolonial
nationalisms
disrupted
by
diasporic
queer
critics.67
Rather,
from
Driskill's
"erotics
of
sovereignty"
to
the
Two-Spirit
and
Native
HIV/
AIDS
activism
recounted
in
this
book,
Native
queers
lead
their
peoples
in
reimagining
modes
of
embodiment,
desire,
and
collectivity
that
defy
their
queered
encounters
with
settler
colonialism.
Their
redefinitions
of
nationality
are
informed
by
Smith's
account
of
Native
feminists
whose
"models
of
nationhood
...
do
not
have
the
heteronormative,
patriarchal,
nuclear
family
as
their
building
block,"
but
produce
national
belonging
that,
"rather
than
a
commitment
to
national
chauvinism
and
insularity,"
performs
creative
solidarities
and
"unlikely
alliances"
in
pursuit
of
Indigenous
decolonization.68

Following
Indigenous
feminist
and
queer
critics,
I
understand
queer
to
be
a
location
constituted
by
white-supremacist
settler
colonialism
that
will
be
unascertainable
until
this
condition
is
explained.
My
argument
is
less
"intersectional"
than
genealogical,
in
that
nothing
in
the
history
of
white-
supremacist
settler
colonialism
or
the
globalization
of
European
capital
and
empire
that
it
facilitates
is
separable
from
what
is
perceived
as
"queer."
But
a

51
stronger
implication
is
epistemological:
eliding
such
analyses
will
leave
queer
studies
empty
of
meaning.
The
problem
is
not
that
white,
class-privileged,
national
inheritors
of
settler
colonialism
have
been
central
to
queer
accounts.
The
problem
is
that
all
conclusions
drawn
from
such
accounts
fail
to
explain
not
only
all
who
are
excluded
from
them
but
also
all
who
are
included:
because
the
only
possible
explanation
of
queerness
under
white-supremacist
settler
colonialism
is
one
that
also
interrogates
that
condition.
Queer
studies
must
examine
settler
colonialism
as
a
condition
of
its
own
work.
A
queer
critique
of
location,
temporality,
or
belonging
that
naturalizes
its
relationship
to
settler
colonialism
no
longer
will
be
considered
transgressive.
Native
queer
appeals
to
national
traditions
or
liberation,
in
turn,
no
longer
will
be
considered
normative
if
their
effect
is
to
denaturalize
settler
heteropatriarchy
and
homonationalism
while
investing
Native
decolonization
in
feminist
and
queer
social
change.
All
this
follows
once
settler
colonialism
and
Indigenous
decolonization
become
a
focus
of
queer
studies.

My
account
recognizes
in
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
projects
a
discrepancy
in
relation
to
settler
colonial
biopolitics
and
the
"contact
zone"
of
settler
sexuality.
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
recall
languages,
memories,
and
relations
that
exceed
colonial
epistemic
authority,
and
their
relationship
to
these
formations
answers
the
queered
conditions
of
Native
people
under
settler
rule.
Their
projects
thus
disrupt
the
temporality
of
settler
colonialism,
which
predicts
indigeneity's
erasure
by
positing
authenticity
as
a
past
split
from
a
progressive
present.
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
perform
instead
the
queer
temporality
of
Native
modernity,
wherein
tradition
is
precisely
not
primordial
but
an
articulation
of
memory
and
survival
with
life
in
a
settler
colonial
situation.
I
recognize
Native
queer
modernities
arising
discrepantly
from
non-Native
queer
modernities
precisely
when
they
engage
in
power-laden
conversation.
In
so
doing,
Native
queer
people
may
act
as
Chela
Sandoval
theorized
for
U.S./Third
World
feminists,
who
traversed
and

52
displaced
the
boundaries
of
modernist
social
movements
in
a
differential
oppositional
consciousness.69
Or,
they
may
practice
what
Munoz
named
for
queers
of
color
as
disidentification
from
the
totalizing
binary
of
opposition
or
assimilation
by
working
"on
and
in"
power
to
expose
and
disrupt
its
effects.i0
Women
of
color
feminism
and
queer
of
color
critique
resonate
with
Indigenous
queer
critiques
when
their
objects
and
claims
are
recognized
as
conditioned
by
the
settler
colonial
power
that
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
displace.

By
way
of
response,
this
book
examines
how
non-Natives
formed
modern
queer
identities,
cultures,
and
politics
in
the
United
States
while
participating
in
a
white
settler
society.
I
explain
variation
among
non-Native
queer
projects
by
their
degree
of
consonance
with
white-supremacist
settler
colonial
power,
which
establishes
the
heteronormative
binary
sex/gender
systems
on
Native
land.
My
account
both
affirms
and
extends
that
of
scholars
of
homonormativity
and
homonationalism.
Locating
homonationalism
within
a
critique
of
settler
colonialism
suggests
that
this
phenomenon
is
unlikely
to
describe
the
alignments
of
only
some
queers
with
neoliberal
or
imperial
power.
All
queer
modernities
under
white-supremacist
settler
colonialism
respond
to
its
power,
the
very
power
Native
queer
and
TwoSpirit
critiques
continue
to
contest.
Several
implications
follow.

Queer
critics
must
not
be
satisfied
once
they
identify
homonationalist
defenders
of
civilization
as
if
this
means
that
their
work
is
done-indeed,
as
if
antiracism,
anti-imperialism,
or
anticolonialism
are
not
routes
to
the
practice
of
homonationalism.
In
a
white
settler
society,
seeking
homonationalist
alignment
with
the
settler
state
creates
non-Native
queer
modernities
as
normatively
white
appeals
to
settler
citizenship.
Read
strictly
within
the
normatively
white
and
non-Native
frame
of
white
settler
colonialism,
modern
queers
are
homonationalists.
Here,
homonationalist
aspirations
will
traverse

53
the
normative
routes
of
settler
citizenship,
by
aspiring
to
civilizational
modernity,
but
also
by
incorporating
and
transcending
the
primitivity
that
settlers
definitively
supplant
and
recall.
American
and
Native
studies
show
that
settler
citizens
in
the
United
States
are
at
once
civilizationalists
and
primitivists.
In
this
context,
homonationalism
will
define
modern
queers
within
quests
to
achieve
settler
citizenship;
and
civilizationalist
and
primitivist
practices
will
derive
from
and
express
homonationalism.
Thus,
while
queer
scholars
today
must
continue
to
target
white-supremacist
and
imperialist
forms
of
homonationalism,
the
problem
this
book
addresses
is
somewhat
different.
For
some
time,
I
have
been
preoccupied
with
the
settler
colonial
and
homonationalist
implications
of
queer
projects
produced
within
the
horizons
of
liberal
multicultural
logics
of
inclusion,
equity,
and
democracy,
and
their
interdependence
with
radicalisms
pursuing
anti-oppression,
structural
change,
and
revolution.
I
am
especially
concerned
by
any
suggestion
that
queer
radicalism
initiates
queer
modernities
that
queer
liberalisms
only
secondarily
normalize
for
a
heteropatriarchal
society.
Queer
radicalisms
and
liberalisms
arise
interdependently
within
white-supremacist
settler
colonialism
and
perform
settler
homonationalism
when
they
traverse
primitivist
and
civilizationalist
trajectories
of
queer
liberation.

Although
my
arguments
are
specific
to
the
racial
and
national
contexts
of
the
United
States,
they
are
applicable
to
other
white
settler
societies.
Yet
the
U.S.
context
remains
key
because
of
the
global
hegemony
asserted
by
U.S.
queer
projects.
Settler
colonialism
is
part
of
all
power
projected
by
the
United
States
as
"domestic"
or
global
acts.
Therefore,
the
distinctly
"nonNative"
and
settler
form
of
U.S.
queer
modernities
can
sustain
wherever
U.S.
queer
subjects,
cultures,
or
politics
go.
I
join
ethnographers
of
transnational
sexualities
in
being
skeptical
that
U.S.
queer
formations
overwrite
local
or
national
creativity
among
queer
people
worldwide.
7Nevertheless,
scholars
of
queer
globalization
should
ask
how
the
settler
colonial
formation
of
U.S.

54
queer
modernities
articulates
across
borders.
If
modern
queers
become
settlers
in
the
United
States,
then
this
path
to
queer
modernity
may
create
queers
as
settlers
even
if
they
travel,
or
appear
elsewhere.
I
propose
all
of
these
implications
without
attempting
to
write
"outside"
the
colonial
conditions
I
critique.
White
queer
critics
are
called
to
undertake
a
critique
of
settler
colonialism-by
Indigenous
feminist
and
queer
critiques,
and
the
critique
of
settler
colonialism
in
Native
studies-and
that
is
what
this
book
endeavors
to
do.

Nevertheless,
this
book
examines
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
not
so
much
to
critique
non-Native
queers
as
colonial
but
to
ask
why
and
how
diverse
non-Native
and
Native
queer
people
arise
within
intimately
relational
and
power-laden
conversations,
with
effects
that
as
often
as
not
blur
easy
distinctions
of
"colonial"
from
The
book
explains
non-Native
queer
modernities
as
forming
within
the
friction
of
conversations
with
discrepant
Native
queer
modernities
denaturalizing
settler
colonialism.
Neither
chosen
nor
denied,
these
conversations
are
not
utopian;
but
they
nevertheless
form
creative
zones
of
contact
and
transformation
whose
outcomes
are
not
preordained.
Interreferential
moments
in
conversation
show
that
the
meaning
of
non-Native
or
Native
queer
subjectivity
appeared
by
engaging
relational
claims.
Apparently
close
ties
nevertheless
led
to
communicating
in
divergent
registers,
even
as
distant
projects
cited
similar
registers,
with
often
distinct
effects.
I
examine
these
effects
by
oscillating
between
synchronic
and
diachronic
contexts
and
local
and
mobile
spatializations.
My
genealogical
readings
hinge
on
narrative
spaces-testimonies,
newsletters,
books,
research
reports,
visual
media;
community
centers,
performances,
rural
camps,
and
public
activism-near
which
I
was
located
in
my
historical
and
ethnographic
research.
I
examine
"communities"
as
inexplicable
except
within
the
relations
of
culture
and
power
marked
by
genealogy.
My
effort
to
mediate
multiple
voices
in
interlinked
accounts
is
also
a
contribution
to
their
dialogue.
Thus,
in

55
the
end,
more
than
a
study
of
conversation,
this
book
is
a
kind
of
conversation,
as
well
as
an
effort
to
transform
those
in
which
it
arose
and
that
it
examines.

56


57
MODERN
SEXUALITY
ARISES
IN
SETTLER
SOCIETIES
as
a
function
o f
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism.
In
the
United
States,
the
sexual
colonization
of
Native
peoples
produced
modern
sexuality
as
"settler
sexuality":
a
white
and
national
heteronormativity
formed
by
regulating
Native
sexuality
and
gender
while
appearing
to
supplant
them
with
the
sexual
modernity
of
settlers.
Queer
modernities
in
a
settler
society
are
produced
in
contextual
relationship
to
the
settler
colonial
conditions
of
modern
sexuality.

White
settlers
promulgating
colonial
heteropatriarchy
queered
Native
peoples
and
all
racialized
subject
populations
for
elimination
and
regulation
by
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism.
Achille
Mbembe
has
adapted
Giorgio
Agamben's
account
of
biopower
to
colonial
situations
by
explaining
colonial
rule
as
"necropolitics,"
or
a
positioning
of
the
space-time
of
the
colony
in
a
state
of
exception
to
Western
imperial
rule.'
Mbembe
invites
revisiting
the
racialization
and
sexualization
of
colonial
situations,
including
in
white
settler
societies
in
the
Americas
that
formed
multiracial
societies
from
the
transatlantic
slave
trade,
colonized
indentured
labor,
and
genocidal
control
of
Indigenous
peoples
under
European
settlement.
However,
to
pursue
such
an
account,
scholars
must
explain
how
the
colony
comes
to
be
located
in
a
state
of
exception
in
context
of
white-supremacist
settler
colonialism
and
the
logic
of
Indigenous
elimination.
Mbembe's
account
limited
its
analysis
to
modern
regimes
of
colonial
biopolitics
that
arose
in
the
nineteenth-century
European

58
franchise
colonization
of
Africa
and
Asia.
As
a
practice
that
is
not
past
but
continues
today,
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
requires
specific
study.'
This
chapter
names
necessary
elements
to
such
an
account,
narrowed
to
explain
the
settler
colonial
necropolitics
that
queered
Native
peoples
in
the
Americas
by
targeting
modes
of
embodiment,
desire,
and
kinship
that
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
reclaim
as
their
and
their
peoples'
histories.

I
argue
that
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
produces
settler
sexuality
as
the
context
traversed
by
non-Native
and
Native
people
formulating
queer
modernities.
The
queering
of
Native
peoples
defined
not
only
settler
sexuality,
broadly,
but
also
the
definition
of
queer
subjects
among
white
settlers:
as
a
primitive,
racialized
sexual
margin
akin
to
what
white
settlers
attempted
to
conquer
among
Natives.
When
queer
white
settlers
reversed
such
discourses-
notably
by
laying
claim
to
the
colonial
object
berdache3-they
argued
their
inclusion
in
settler
society
by
traversing
normative
paths
to
settler
citizenship,
which
incorporate
and
transcend
ties
to
Native
roots
to
achieve
national
belonging.
Non-Native
queer
modernities
form
by
gathering
a
multiracial,
transnational
constituency
as
a
diversity
that
exists
in
a
non-Native
relationship
to
disappearing
indigeneity.
Yet,
narrating
Native
disappearance
distinguishes
non-Native
queer
modernities
from
the
survival
of
Native
queer
people,
who
negotiate
settler
sexuality
by
recalling
knowledges
and
practices
queered
by
colonial
heteropatriarchy.
Native
people
defined
unique
identities,
including
Two-Spirit,
as
modern,
decolonizing
Native
critiques
of
settler
colonialism
and
its
structuring
of
non-Native
queer
projects.
This
chapter
grounds
my
interpretation
of
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
within
a
genealogy
of
white-supremacist
settler
colonialism
as
the
condition
of
sexual
modernity
and
its
contestation
in
a
settler
society.

Modern
Sexuality
and
Settler
Colonial
Biopolitics

Interdisciplinary
theory
of
biopower
has
yet
to
investigate
the
specificity
of

59
settler
colonialism,
but
its
analysis
can
inform
diversely
racialized
and
transnational
settler
colonial
formations
and,
in
turn,
be
transformed
by
them.
European
settler
colonization
of
Indigenous
peoples
produced
modes
of
biopower
that
condition
all
modern
sexuality.
Multiple
forms
of
colonization
defined
racialized
and
Indigenous
peoples
in
settler
societies
in
the
Americas
in
the
context
of
white-supremacist
settler
colonization's
logic
of
elimination.
Patrick
Wolfe
explains
European
settler
colonialism
by
distinguishing
the
material
conditions
and
discursive
effects
of
settler
from
franchise
colonies,
where
the
latter
are
defined
by
European
control
at
a
distance
or
as
a
minority,
while
the
former
pursue
the
wholesale
replacement
of
Native
peoples
to
establish
a
white
settler
majority.
Wolfe
notes
that
in
American
settler
societies,
this
distinction
parallels
the
contrast
between
the
genocidal
elimination
and
amalgamation
of
Native
peoples,
which
clears
land
for
white
settlers,
and
their
brutal
creation
and
reproduction
of
subject
racialized
populations
through
the
transatlantic
slave
trade
and
indentured
colonized
labor
to
make
settled
lands
productive.'
Nevertheless,
as
for
Mbembe,
theory
of
colonial
biopolitics
generally
is
defined
only
by
reference
to
franchise
colonies-for
example,
European
colonization
of
Africa
and
Asia
in
the
nineteenth
and
twentieth
centuries,
where
long-standing
modes
of
biopower
in
Western
sovereignty
shifted
into
modern
regimes
of
biopolitics.
If
such
times
or
places
focus
our
definitions
of
"colonialism"
and
"biopolitics,"
we
will
not
comprehend
how
settler
colonization
in
the
Americas
from
the
sixteenth
century
functioned
alongside
colonization
in
Africa
and
Asia
within
modes
of
biopower
to
produce
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism.
Foucault
argued
that
biopower
and
its
biopolitical
regimes
appear
at
a
historical
shift,
as
the
premodern
right
of
the
sovereign
to
mete
out
death
in
punishment-to
"let
live
and
make
as
modern
states
utilize
disciplinary
power
to
"make
live"
racialized
national
populations
and
to
"let
die"
all
excluded
from
this
life-making
project.'
Giorgio
Agamben
counters
that,
rather
than
an
effect
of
the

60
historical
shift
Foucault
names,
biopower
is
a
core
condition
of
Western
sovereignty
inherited
from
Roman
law.
For
Agamben,
both
sovereign
power
over
death
and
the
modern
state's
power
over
life
exhibit
biopower,
whereas
Foucault's
genealogy
of
modern
biopolitics
describes
just
one,
historically
recent,
elaboration
of
biopower
into
a
form
that
now
appears
ubiquitous.'
Agamben
does
not
reject
Foucault's
periodization
of
a
premodern
power
over
death
being
modified
by
modern
biopolitics,
but
he
does
redefine
biopower
as
constituting
Western
sovereignty
in
the
enactment
of
the
state
of
exception.

If
the
European
contexts
examined
by
Foucault
and
Agamben
are
viewed
in
relationship
to
settler
colonization
in
the
Americas,
one
can
see
with
Agamben
that
the
sovereign
rule
imposed
by
colonial
powers
from
the
sixteenth
to
the
eighteenth
centuries
already
functioned
as
biopower,
by
positioning
Native
peoples
perpetually
in
the
state
of
exception.
Here,
Mbembe's
theory
of
the
colony
as
exception
demands
being
correlated
to
Wolfe's
account
of
settler
colonialism
as
a
logic
of
elimination,
to
recognize
Native
peoples
being
positioned
within
the
state
of
exception
by
projects
of
white
settler
replacement.
The
logic
of
Indigenous
elimination
provided
a
necessary
premise
for
any
subsequent
subjection
of
African,
Asian,
or
Pacific
peoples
within
the
colonial
state
of
exception
on
putatively
emptied
land.
Moreover,
as
Mark
Rifkin
argues,
that
logic
grounds
settler
colonial
biopolitics
in
the
geopolitical
project
of
defining
the
territoriality
of
the
nation"
when
attempting
to
control
Indigenous
people
and
supplant
Indigenous
sovereignty.'
No
account
of
biopolitics
will
explain
a
multiracial
and
transnational
settler
society
or
its
projections
into
a
colonized
and
globalized
world
unless
its
foundational
conditioning
by
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
and
the
logic
of
Indigenous
elimination
structures
our
theory
of
the
exception
and
the
colonial
exercise
of
sovereignty.

In
the
Americas
and,
specifically,
the
United
States,
the
biopolitics
of
settler

61
colonialism
was
constituted
by
the
imposition
of
colonial
heteropatriarchy
and
the
hegemony
of
settler
sexuality,
which
sought
both
the
elimination
of
Indigenous
sexuality
and
its
incorporation
into
settler
sexual
modernity.
Theorists
of
sexuality
who
address
biopower
and
colonization
are
indebted
to
Ann
Stoler's
efforts
to
locate
Foucauldian
accounts
of
modern
sexuality
within
colonial
studies.'
Although
Foucault
omitted
colonialism
from
his
work
on
sexuality,
Stoler
demonstrated
how
the
histories
he
traced
in
Europe
explain
those
of
imperial
metropoles
and
colonial
societies
producing
modern
sexuality
and
"race"
as
biopower.9
Stoler
displaced
more
common
readings
of
Foucault's
history
of
sexuality
in
queer
theory,
which
tended
to
frame
European
societies
and
their
normative
whiteness
as
roots
of
modern
sexuality,
and
to
pay
secondary
or
no
attention
to
race
or
colonialism.
In
particular,
early
queer
accounts
of
Foucault's
history
of
modern
sexuality
did
not
emphasize
his
reading
of
it
as
a
mode
of
biopolitics,
by
which
he
described
modern
regimes
that
produce
subjects
of
life
by
deploying
state
racism
to
define
populations
for
regulation.
Stoler
argued
that
linking
theories
of
biopolitics
and
colonialism
shifts
trajectories
of
queer
theory
that
would
interpret
Foucault's
history
of
sexuality
as
"a
history
of
western
desire."10
In
light
of
colonial
histories,
Europe
is
Western
only
to
the
extent
that
it
is
metropolitan-a
center
of
colonial
empires-which
means
that
neither
Europe
nor
Western
cultural
legacies
will
be
understood
without
first
studying
their
formation
in
relationship
to
both
settler
and
franchise
colonial
societies.
Stoler
and
other
scholars
in
colonial
studies
examined
how
racial
and
national
formations
of
sexuality
produced
the
biopolitics
of
colonial
regimes."
As
Stoler
notes,
a
focus
on
modes
of
reproduction
has
accounted
poorly
for
nonheteronormative
sexualities
and
genders,
and
still
requires
critically
queer
readings.
Yet
work
in
colonial
strudies
shows-in
concert
with
Foucault's
work,
but
against
limits
he
put
on
it-that
modern
sexuality
may
have
arisen
first
in
colonial
societies,
including
settler
colonial
societies,
if
not
in
their
relationship

62
to
European
imperial
states.
On
this
basis,
Stoler
explains
the
sexual
and
racial
regimes
of
metropolitan
and
colonial
societies
as
based
on
a
colonial
"education
of
desire."
Stoler
here
marks
how
colonial
power
deployed
a
sovereign
power
over
death
that
nevertheless
became
complementary
with
a
modern
and
disciplinary
education
of
desire
that
produced
normative
subjects
of
life
in
relation
to
subject
populations.
She
presents
colonial
biopolitics
as
what
Foucault
called
a
"society
of
normalization"-"a
society
where
the
norm
of
discipline
and
the
norm
of
regularization
intersect"
-
and
shows
that
it
formed
subjects
of
life
and
populations
marked
for
deadly
regulation
by
educating
them
in
their
interdependent
locations
within
colonial
regimes."

Stoler's
account
of
colonial
biopolitics
can
illuminate
how
the
sexual
colonization
of
Native
peoples
in
the
United
States
conditioned
the
settler
sexuality
that
formed
to
control
and
supplant
them.
Yet,
her
focus
on
franchise
colonies
in
the
modern
era
of
biopolitics
distinguishes
her
work
from
accounts
of
white
settler
colonization
in
the
Americas,
including
its
periodicity
across
the
shifting
modes
of
biopower
within
Western
law
from
the
fifteenth
to
the
nineteenth
centuries.
The
specificities
of
these
histories
of
biopower
already
appear
in
scholarship
on
sexuality
and
settler
colonialism,
which
shows
that
in
settler
societies
in
the
Americas,
sexuality
served
as
a
primary
locus
in
projecting
settler
colonial
power.
With
Andrea
Smith
we
see
that
the
sexual
violence
of
colonial
heteropatriarchy
enabled
the
European
conquest
of
Native
peoples
as
queer
to
colonial
rule,
including
by
targeting
Native
systems
of
gender
and
sexuality
that
conflicted
with
European
colonial
logics.
Rifkin
shows
that
colonial
regulation
of
Native
peoples
for
assimilation
targeted
kinship
relations
that
appeared
nonheteronormative
as
a
way
of
maintaining
settler
colonial
control.
Smith's
and
Rifkin's
work
suggests
that
the
violent
disciplinary
regulation
of
Native
peoples
taught
settlers
doing
this
work,
or
any
non-Natives
witnessing
or
inheriting
its
effects,
the
meaning
of
being
subjected
to
modern
sexuality
as
settler
sexuality.
It
thus
cannot
be
separated
from
the

63
education
of
desire
presented
to
subject
racialized
peoples
and
peoples
assimilated
into
whiteness
by
the
sexualized
violence
that
defined
a
white-
supremacist
society.
My
focus
on
the
sexual
colonization
of
Native
peoples
does
not
suggest
its
separability
or
exclusivity,
but
instead
asks
how
it
illuminates
the
conditioning
of
a
white
settler
society
by
this
mode
of
colonization.
Future
studies
can
pursue
this
even
more
by,
for
example,
investigating
the
triangulated
histories
of
Native
peoples,
African
diasporic
peoples,
and
white
settlers
in
the
United
States
by
linking
Saidya
Hartman's
account
on
the
terrorizing
sexualization
of
enslavement
or
Jim
Crow
society
with
the
colonial
education
of
desire
under
white
settler
colonization
of
Native
peoples.13
A
key
contribution
by
Native
and
settler
colonial
studies
to
such
comparisons
would
be
to
explain
the
conditioning
of
each
case,
and
their
relationship
to
each
other,
by
the
logic
of
elimination
within
white-
supremacist
settler
colonialism.
My
review
of
these
processes
affirms
that
a
shift
in
the
genocidal
logic
of
white
settler
sovereignty,
from
exacting
death
to
regulating
life,
explains
the
queering
of
Native
peoples
by
colonial
heteropatriarchy
as
a
state
of
exception
within
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism.
Modern
sexuality
appears
as
settler
sexuality
in
this
context.
The
queering
of
white
settlers
as
outside
the
promise
of
modern
sexuality
then
incites
U.S.
queer
modernities
to
form
as
appeals
to
white
settler
hegemony,
which
queers
of
color
and
Native
queer
people
also
negotiate
in
distinct
ways.

Sexual
Colonization
and
Disciplinary
Power

Early
colonists
recurrently
exacted
a
terrorizing
sovereign
right
of
death
in
order
to
educate
Native
people
in
the
new
colonial
moral
order.
While
interpreting
Peter
Martyr's
account
of
Vasco
Nunez
de
Balboa's
1513
expedition
in
Panama,
Jonathan
Goldberg
notes
that
Balboa's
victorious
arrival
after
battle
at
the
house
of
the
Indigenous
king
was
framed
by
his
condemnation
and
elimination
of
what
he
perceived
to
be
gender
and
sexual

64
transgression.
On
reportedly
finding
the
king's
brother
and
about
forty
other
men
dressed
in
women's
apparel
or
living
in
sexual
relationships,
Balboa
threw
them
out
to
be
eaten
alive
by
his
dogs.
Goldberg
says
that
this
act
"retrospectively
justifies"
the
conqueror's
earlier
slaughters
in
battle-in
which
Spanish
soldiers
killed
Indians
"as
animals"-or,
to
quote
Martyr,
"hewed
...
in
pieces
as
the
butchers
doo
fleshe."
For
Goldberg,
"post-facto,
the
body
of
the
sodomite
takes
on
an
originary
status,
as
the
cause
for
what
was
done
to
the
Indians
in
the
first
place.""
Linking
ascriptions
of
savagery
to
transgressions
of
a
sexual
nature
thus
defined
European
rule
as
sexual
colonization.

The
account
of
Balboa
evokes
qualities
that
inflected
other
early
Spanish,
French,
and
British
encounters
with
Native
peoples
narrated
by
the
category
of
berdache.
This
Orientalist
term
arose
first
to
condemn
Middle
Eastern
and
Muslim
men
as
racial
enemies
of
Christian
civilization,
by
linking
them
to
the
creation
of
berdache
(in
translation)
as
"kept
boys"
or
"boy
slaves"
whose
sex
was
said
to
have
been
altered
by
immoral
male
desire.
Like
the
category
berdache,
the
transgressions
Balboa
described
did
not
mark
just
gender
or
sexual
transgressions
but
the
acts
of
powerful
men
that
turned
them
or
others
against
nature,
resulting
in
an
immoral
and
effeminized
male
leadership
that
invited
and
justified
conquest.
Such
an
account
reflects
how
early-modern
European
systems
of
sex
fostered
misogynist
hierarchies,
in
which
transgressive
desires
could
be
feared
for
threatening
a
reversal
of
sex.15
In
this
context,
the
privileges
of
manhood
were
defined
restrictively
by
achievement,
so
that
males
whose
age,
class,
nationality,
or
race
made
them
capable
of
manhood
still
were
exhorted
to
attain
it.
Manhood
was
achieved
by
practicing
natural
law,
but
it
remained
limited
and
malleable,
particularly
if
unnatural
desires
created
conditions
to
become
unmanned
and
unsexed.16
Because
berdache
in
fact
defined
the
primitivity
not
just
of
a
distinctive
subject
but
of
the
society
of
men
producing
it,
the
object
extended
early-modern
European
policing
of
sex.
Persons
marked
as
berdache
became
targets
of
violent
efforts
to
reconfigure

65
Indigenous
society
in
colonial
and
masculinist
terms,
by
exacting
a
responsibility
from
Indigenous
men
to
defend
colonial
sexual
morality
in
their
own
and
all
Indigenous
people's
lives.
Moreover,
by
imputing
sexual
primitivity
to
racialized
targets
of
conquest,
early-modern
narratives
of
berdache
affirmed
the
fulfillment
of
natural
sex
and
desire
by
conquerors.
Berdache
thus
marked
a
relationality
not
only
among
Indigenous
males,
but
also
between
Indigenous
societies
and
the
civilizational
sex
and
sexuality
of
Europeans.
Stoler's
feminist
accounts
of
colonial
power
indicate
that
imposition
of
colonial
rule
was
justified
by
discovering
signs
of
a
primitive
lack
of
differentiation
between
the
sexes.
Knowing
European
manhood's
boundaries
to
be
porous
and
needing
reinforcement,
and
meeting
Indigenous
possibilities
that
threw
such
boundaries
into
question,
early
conquerors
invoked
berdache
as
if
assigning
a
failure
to
differentiate
sex
to
Indigenous
people,
but
they
did
so
to
define
sexual
normativity
for
them
all.
Thus,
if
colonial
observers
invoked
berdache
to
mark
Indigenous
difference,
the
aim
was
to
teach
both
colonial
and
Indigenous
subjects
the
relational
terms
of
colonial
heteropatriarchy.
Earlier
generations
of
feminist
scholars
argued
that
a
bias
in
colonial
tales
of
berdache
erased
female
embodiment
from
accounts
o f
Native
gender
and
sexual
diversity.
But
feminist
critiques
in
the
wake
of
Stoler
and
Smith
note
that
the
condemnation
of
Native
male
embodiment
in
colonial
accounts
of
berdache
established
the
masculinist
and
heteropatriarchal
terms
of
colonial
power.
Thus,
I
invoke
berdache
to
indicate
not
persons
but
a
logic
of
sexual
primitivity
and
civilization
that
created
Indigenous
people
and
colonists
in
relation
to
each
other.
In
the
process,
colonial
discourses
of
race
and
sexuality
came
to
mark
transgressive
individuals
and
entire
communities
when
they
meted
out
spectacular
death
to
educate
Native
peoples
in
the
moral
order
of
colonization.

Histories
of
colonial
control
over
Indigenous
male
sexuality
support
Foucault's
claim
that
a
sovereign
right
of
death
joined
the
rationalizing

66
management
of
populations
to
produce
modern
disciplinary
power.
Zeb
Tortorici
examined
a
1604
case
of
sodomy
accusations
in
Valladolid,
Michoacan,
Mexico,
that
illuminates
this
transition.
After
the
capture
of
two
Indigenous
Purepecha
men
"committing
the
pecado
nefando-the
nefarious
sin
of
sodomy,"
a
regional
investigation
resulted
in
sodomy
charges
against
thirteen
Indigenous
and
mestizo
men,
some
of
whom
were
relatives
or
in
long-
term
relationships.
17
For
two
months,
legal
and
religious
authorities
exacted
confessions
and
implications
that
tried
to
determine
the
degree
of
interest
or
culpability
in
the
alleged
acts
for
each
of
the
accused
while
threatening
torture
or
public
execution
as
punishments.
Yet
the
investigation
deferred
its
threatened
outcomes
to
serve
as
a
fact-finding
exercise,
which
mapped
social
networks
along
which
the
church
and
government
began
to
chart
new
routes
for
their
authority
in
Indigenous
communities.
Given
that
only
six
of
the
thirteen
accused
men
were
tried
for
sodomy,
with
four
of
them
executed,
and
others
who
evaded
capture
never
pursued,
Tortorici
suggests
that
in
this
era
the
intimation
of
sodomy
among
Indigenous
men
remained
deadly
but
no
longer
drew
an
absolute
response
(5).
Public
execution
now
appeared
as
a
threatened
end
to
a
broader
process
of
surveillance
and
population
management
that
sought
more
minute
control
over
sexual
transgressions
and
Indigenous
communities.
Tortorici
historicizes
this
shift
in
managing
sexuality
within
the
secularization
of
colonial
Mexican
society,"
so
that,
"while
in
1604
four
of
the
Purepecha
men
accused
of
sodomy
were
executed
for
their
crimes,
in
the
eighteenth
century
men
found
guilty
of
sodomy
were
never
executed
for
their
crimes"
Yet
the
study
of
"sodomitical
subcultures"
(as
Tortorici
calls
them)
remained
a
method
for
colonial
authorities
to
study
and
control
sexuality
among
Native
peoples.

Scholars
of
Anglophone
and
Francophone
North
America
also
have
observed
how
gender
and
sexuality
shaped
colonial
expansion
and
its
shifts
toward
disciplinary
regimes
of
modern
sexuality.
The
settlement
of
French

67
and
British
Canada
and
of
colonial
and
postrevolutionary
New
England
produced
strongly
gendered
modes
of
control
over
Native
peoples,
as
war,
containment
on
reserves,
and
colonial
law,
economy,
and
religion
redefined
roles
for
Native
women
and
men
in
work,
marriage,
and
community
leadership.18
Accounts
of
sexual
and
gender
diversity
appear
most
clearly
when
British,
French,
and
U.S.
explorers
and
traders
participated
in
the
fur
trade
or
colonial
expansion
and
met
Native
people
whom
they
called
berdache,
"warrior
women,"
or
other
terms
of
fascination
or
contempt.
In
the
midnineteenth
century,
when
most
such
accounts
appear,
persons
so
marked
were
less
often
singled
out
for
violence
than
subjected
with
their
communities
to
military
attack,
containment,
or
removal.
They
also
came
to
notice
in
new
colonial
institutions
such
as
Indian
agencies,
missionary
churches,
and
boarding
schools.
Without
needing
to
exact
brute
violence,
these
institutions
used
disciplinary
education
to
try
to
break
Native
communities,
languages,
and
cultural
knowledges-as
reflected
in
Captain
Richard
Pratt's
Carlisle
Indian
School
and
his
motto,
"Kill
the
Indian,
and
save
the
man."
Native
people
made
colonial
institutions
sites
for
defying
the
erasure
of
Native
identity
or
community,
including
at
times
by
adopting
colonial
languages
and
educational
methods
in
new
forms
of
resistance.19
But
both
colonial
control
and
Native
resistance
were
shaped
by
struggle
over
gender
and
sexuality,
through
the
establishment
on
the
colonial
frontier
of
modern
methods
for
the
colonial
education
of
desire.

The
grounding
of
U.S.
colonization
in
sexual
regulation
and
discipline
is
demonstrated,
for
instance,
by
the
history
of
the
Crow
Agency
and
the
life
of
Osh-Tisch
(Finds-Them-and-Kills-Them).
Osh-Tisch
was
born
in
1854
and
was
raised
and
recognized
in
Crow
society
as
bote
(or
bade),
a
Crow
role
in
which
she
lived
consistently
on
Crow
land
to
the
age
of
seventy-five.20
I
use
the
pronoun
she
in
line
with
the
English
usage
of
Pretty
Shield,
a
member
of
Osh-Tisch's
village,
who
later
recalled
Osh-Tisch
as
"a
Crow
woman"
who
was

68
also
"neither
a
man
nor
a
woman."
Will
Roscoe
reports
from
oral
histories
of
Osh-Tisch's
life
that
her
community
included
many
botes,
as
well
as
at
least
one
"woman
who
had
no
man
of
her
own,"
The
Other
Magpie,
whom
Osh-
Tisch
accompanied
in
sharing
exploits
in
battle
(30-32).
After
the
establishment
of
the
Crow
Agency
and
other
colonial
institutions,
Roscoe
says,
Crow
people
were
"subjected
to
ongoing
interference
by
representatives
of
the
U.S.
government,"
including
in
contests
over
botes,
among
whom
Osh-
Tisch
was
prominent.
Robert
Lowie
said
of
Osh-Tisch
that
"former
agents
have
repeatedly
tried
to
make
him
don
male
clothes,
but
the
other
Indians
themselves
protested
against
this,
saying
that
it
was
against
his
nature"
(29).
Walter
Williams
interviewed
Crow
tribal
historian
Joe
Medicine
Crow
about
his
memories
of
Osh-Tisch,
who
died
in
1929
when
Medicine
Crow
was
seven
years
old.
When
I
asked
about
the
controversy
over
Osh-Tisch's
clothing,"
Williams
says,
he
did
not
answer
but
told
me
to
meet
him
the
following
day
on
the
grounds
of
the
Bureau
of
Indian
Affairs
offices.
I
arrived
the
next
day
and
observed
that
the
BIA
building
was
surrounded
by
huge
oak
trees."
Medicine
Crow
then
reflected
that

One
agent
in
the
late
1890s
...
tried
to
interfere
with
Osh-Tisch,
who
was
the
most
respected
bade.
The
agent
incarcerated
the
bades,
cut
off
their
hair,
made
them
wear
men's
clothing.
He
forced
them
to
do
manual
labor,
planting
these
trees
that
you
see
here
on
the
BIA
grounds.
The
people
were
so
upset
with
this
that
Chief
Pretty
Eagle
came
into
Crow
Agency,
and
told
[the
agent]
to
leave
the
reservation.
It
was
a
tragedy,
trying
to
change
them.'

Both
Lowie
and
Medicine
Crow
say
that
the
agency
established
its
rule
by
targeting
botes
for
gendered
and
sexual
reeducation,
which
sparked
resistance
by
Crow
leaders
and
their
community.
Yet,
even
as
pressure
for
gendered
and
sexual
conformity
increased
in
schools
and
churches,
resistance
to
it
did
not

69
end.
According
to
Roscoe,

children
were
required
to
attend
government-run
boarding
schools
in
which
any
expression
or
use
of
native
language
and
customs
was
severely
punished,
boys
and
girls
were
segregated,
and
girls
were
not
allowed
to
leave
the
school
until
husbands
had
been
found
for
them.
In
such
an
environment,
children
with
bote
tendencies
were
quickly
identified.
According
to
Holder,
when
a
Crow
boy
was
found
secretly
dressing
in
female
clothes
in
the
late
1880s,
"He
was
punished,
but
finally
escaped
from
school
and
became
a
bote,
which
vocation
he
has
since
followed."22

Historical
records
indicate
that
Osh-Tisch
lived
as
a
bote
for
the
rest
of
her
life.
In
1891
she
took
in
"a
three-year-old
child"
who
was
listed
on
a
census
as
her
"adopted
son,"
but
who
four
years
later
was
recorded
as
a
girl-suggesting
that
Osh-Tisch
was
fulfilling
a
role
in
Crow
community
of
passing
the
life
of
bote
to
a
next
generation.23
Yet,
by
her
late
age,
it
appeared
to
colonial
authorities
that
no
other
Crow
persons
were
living
a
traditional
bote
identity.
Williams
quotes
Crow
medicine
man
Thomas
Yellowtail:
"When
the
Baptist
missionary
Peltotz
arrived
in
1903,
he
condemned
our
traditions,
including
the
bade.
He
told
congregation
members
to
stay
away
from
Osh-Tisch
and
the
other
bades.
He
continued
to
condemn
Osh-Tisch
until
his
death
in
the
late
1920s.
That
may
be
the
reason
why
no
others
took
up
the
bade
role
after
Osh-Tisch
died."24

Death
thus
still
shaped
sexual
colonization
in
the
era
of
containment
and
assimilation,
but
in
new
ways.
Under
colonial
rule,
Native
people
faced
constant
condemnation
of
gender
and
sexual
transgression,
which
at
times
took
shape
as
a
violent
education
in
a
new
life.
But
when
public
punishment-
which
now
did
not
end
in
murder-failed
to
quell
resistance,
the
deadly
logic
of

70
regulation
kicked
in.
After
the
passing
of
old
resisters
like
Osh-Tisch,
colonial
education
prevented
a
new
generation
from
being
raised
so
that
an
entire
way
of
life
seemed
to
have
died
out.
Yet
death
recurs
in
more
ways
in
Native
people's
memories
of
these
changes.
Williams
presents
oral
histories
of
Lakota
traditionalists
who
recalled
the
effects
of
colonial
education.
As
one
explains:

By
the
1940s,
after
more
Indians
had
been
educated
in
white
schools,
or
had
been
taken
away
in
the
army,
they
lost
the
traditions
of
respect
for
winktes.
The
missionaries
condemned
winktes,
telling
families
that
if
something
bad
happened,
it
was
because
of
their
associating
with
a
winkte.
They
would
not
accept
winktes
into
the
cemetery,
saying
"their
souls
are
lost."
Missionaries
had
a
lot
of
power
on
the
reservation,
so
the
winktes
were
ostracized
by
many
of
the
Christianized
Indians.
(182-83)

Williams
quotes
another
telling
of
the
"pressures
put
on
winktes
in
the
1920s
and
1930s":

The
missionaries
and
the
government
agents
said
winktes
were
no
good,
and
tried
to
get
them
to
change
their
ways.
Some
did,
and
put
on
men's
clothing.
But
others,
rather
than
change,
went
out
and
hanged
themselves.
I
remember
the
sad
stories
that
were
told
about
this.
(182)

Williams
also
tells
of
a
Navajo
woman
who
had
narrated
her
own
story
of
being
taken
with
her
relatives
as
a
child
to
the
Carlisle
Indian
School:

Her
cousin,
a
nadle,
was
also
taken
there.
Since
he
was
dressed
as
a
girl,
schoo l
officials
assumed
he
was
female
and
placed
him
in
the
girl's
dormitory.
The
Navajo
students
protected
him,
and
he
went
undiscovered.

Later,
however,
there
was
a
lice
infestation.
The
white
teachers

71
 personally
scrubbed
all
the
girls,
and
were
shocked
when
they
found
out
that
the
nadle
was
male.
The
Navajo
woman
said,
"They
were
very
upset.
He
was
taken
from
the
school,
and
he
never
returned
again.
They
would
not
tell
us
what
happened
to
him,
and
we
never
saw
him
again.
We
were
very
sad
that
our
cousin
was
gone."
The
family
still
does
not
know
if
the
boy
was
sent
to
another
school,
or
to
prison,
or
was
killed.
(180)

In
these
stories
from
the
late
nineteenth
century
to
the
first
half
of
the
twentieth,
death
frames
Native
people's
collective
experiences
of
the
erasure
of
gendered
and
sexual
possibility:
as
exiles
from
the
community's
spiritual
continuity;
in
so
restricting
life
as
to
force
persons
to
"choose"
to
die;
and
in
being
"disappeared"
by
the
traceless
authority
of
the
bureaucratic
colonial
state.
These
are
some
of
the
results
of
shifting
colonial
authority
from
a
brutal
right
of
public
execution
to
the
normalization
of
death
in
regulatory
regimes
based
on
discipline.
But
disciplinary
methods
were
no
less
terrorizing.
They
required
internalizing
the
idea
that
life
as
nddleeh,
winkte,
both,
or
a
"woman
who
had
no
man"
was
impossible.
And
they
suggest
that
the
resistance
of
relatives
and
communities
ultimately
faced
a
colonial
power
determined
to
make
loved
ones
literally
disappear,
into
a
death
beyond
knowledge
of
life
or
death.
These
are
the
terrorizing
logics
of
a
society
of
normalization,
as
Foucault
and
Stoler
theorized,
and
they
were
implemented
on
the
frontier
of
the
settler
state
by
controlling
Native
peoples
as
populations
for
the
colonial
education
of
modern
sexuality.

Settler
Sexuality,
Native
"Disappearance,"
and
Queer
Modernities

The
sexual
regulation
of
Native
peoples
by
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
in
the
United
States
was
a
proving
ground
for
producing
settlers
as
subjects
of
modern
sexuality.
The
late
nineteenth
and
early
twentieth
centuries
saw
institutions
and
discourses
of
modern
sexuality
proliferate
along
with
the
"closure"
of
the
frontier
as
a
central
feature
of
national
consciousness

72
in
a
white
settler
society.
Efforts
to
institute
a
colonial
education
of
desire,
as
in
the
events
at
the
Crow
Agency
or
during
the
1918
tenure
of
the
Carlisle
Indian
School,
informed
the
modern
sexuality
that
white
settlers
promoted
as
settler
sexuality.
Thus,
far
from
reflecting
the
finality
of
conquest,
this
period
was
one
of
tense
negotiations
of
active
and
contested
settlement.
Any
iteration
of
modern
sexuality
in
this
time
that
placed
Native
people
in
the
past
knew
itself
to
be
a
contingent
claim
that
remained
open
to
challenge.
Given
these
conditions,
modern
sexuality
was
not
a
product
of
settler
colonialism,
as
if
it
came
into
being
in
the
United
States
after
settlement.
Rather,
modern
sexuality
became
a
method
to
produce
settler
colonialism,
and
settler
subjects,
by
facilitating
ongoing
conquest
and
naturalizing
its
effects.
If
this
transpired
in
close
relationship
to
Native
people's
institutionalized
education
in
colonial
heteronormativity,
it
arose
more
broadly
in
any
promotions
of
sexual
modernity
within
a
settler
colonial
society
defined
by
the
seeming
finality
of
Native
disappearance
and
replacement.

Settler
colonialism
is
a
primary
condition
of
the
history
of
sexuality
in
the
United
States.
Settler
colonialism
is
present
precisely
when
it
appears
not
to
be,
given
that
its
normative
function
is
to
appear
inevitable
and
final.
Its
naturalization
follows
both
the
seeming
material
finality
of
settler
society
and
discourses
that
frame
settlers
as
"those
who
come
after"
rather
than
as
living
in
relationship
to
Native
peoples
in
a
colonial
situation.
The
denaturalization
of
settler
colonialism
thus
must
address
social
relationships
and
tales
of
Native
disappearance.
Narrating
Native
peoples
as
absent
does
not
erase
them
so
much
as
produce
knowledge
about
them
as
necessarily
disappeared.
Jean
O'Brien
and
James
Cox
point
out
that
the
absence
of
Native
people
in
a
story
tells
a
story
of
the
settler
colonial
conditions
of
its
subjects
and
claims.
Reexamining
the
history
of
modern
sexuality
by
centering
settler
colonialism
and
its
naturalization
will
show
how
these
processes
condition
normative
subjects
of
sexual
modernity
and
the
regulation
and
exclusion
of
subjects
from

73
its
achievement.

Queer
histories
of
modern
sexuality
tend
to
study
non-Natives
without
examining
their
formation
within
settler
colonialism.
Yet
histories
of
sexuality
in
queer
of
color
and
queer
diasporic
critiques
and
queer
migration
studies
already
mark
settler
colonialism
for
critique.
Roderick
Ferguson
and
Eithne
Luibheid
examine
how
the
historical
subjection
of
queer
people
of
color
followed
their
being
marked
within
U.S.
society
as
emblems
of
the
collective
racial
degradation
or
need
for
racial
subjugation
of
peoples
of
color,
as
queered
targets
of
white-supremacist
rule."s
Heteronormative
national
whiteness
established
its
rule
by
sexualizing
the
racial,
economic,
and
political
subjugation
of
peoples
of
color
in
the
name
of
protecting
white
settler
society
from
queer
endangerment
by
perversely
racialized
sexuality
and
gender.
This
process
mirrors
Indigenous
feminist
and
queer
studies
that
show
the
subjection
of
Indigenous
peoples
to
have
followed
their
collective
queering
by
colonial
heteropatriarchy,
including
by
targeting
subjects
who
stood
apart
from
a
colonial
sex/gender
binary.
Luibheid
shows
that
the
locations
of
non-
Native
racialized
communities
have
been
positioned
in
structurally
similar
ways
with
Native
peoples
by
white-supremacist
heteropatriarchal
rule,
and
suggests
that
their
very
distinctive
encounters
with
U.S.
hegemony
may
be
explained
as
interrelated
effects
of
white
settler
colonialism.
Echoing
Wolfe,
the
colonial
subjection
of
Native
peoples
facilitated
their
elimination
so
as
to
consolidate
white
settler
hegemony
over
stolen
and
putatively
emptied
land,
while
the
control
of
non-Native
peoples
of
color
reproduced
their
collective
subjection
for
economic
and
social
roles
within
a
normatively
non-Native
multiracial
and
transnational
settler
society.
These
trajectories
may
conflict,
if
the
experience
of
subjection
or
the
struggle
for
liberation
among
non-Native
people
of
color
naturalizes
the
erasure
of
Native
people
as
inevitable,
necessary,
or
complete
or
has
Native
people's
subjection
as
its
effect.

74
 I
locate
this
queer
history
of
racial
and
national
power
in
a
settler
society
because
queer
histories,
even
when
informed
by
racial
or
national
diversity,
often
give
the
impression
that
modern
queer
subjects,
cultures,
or
politics
come
into
being
within
the
boundaries
of
whiteness.
Histories
of
the
formation
of
modern
sexual
minority
identities
and
politics
in
the
United
Statesor,
derivatively,
in
Europe-indicate
that
nineteenth-
and
twentieth-century
sexual
sciences
produced
subjects
one
might
recognize
today
as
queer
by
designating
forms
of
embodiment
or
desire
as
perversions
that
required
scientific
documentation,
theorization,
and
regulation.
Siobhan
Somerville
notes
that
in
the
United
States,
new
sexual
sciences
enhanced
correlations
of
race
mixture
and
homosexuality
to
frame
queerness
as
racialized
by
an
imputed
primitivity,
which
then
reinforced
mixed-race
people
and
people
of
color
negotiating
the
color
line
as
traversing
sexually
liminal
space.26
Such
narratives
coincided
with
increased
scientific
and
legal
attention
to
diverse
modes
of
embodiment
and
desire
in
sexual
subcultures
defined
by
race,
nation,
class,
or
gender,
which
new
scientific
categories
never
entirely
contained.
For
instance,
Kevin
Mumford
shows
how
social
practices
in
the
early
twentieth
century
linked
homosexuality
to
miscegenation
within
popular
narratives
and
policing
practices
of
white
"slumming"
for
sexual
adventure
in
African
American
districts
of
New
York
City
and
Chicago.27
New
policing
of
a
variety
of
racialized
sexual
cultures
fostered
narratives
of
sexual
marginality
that
elided
those
that
did
not
devolve
on
some
relation
to
whiteness,
whether
through
social
ties
or
teleologies
of
primitivity
and
modernity.
Of
course,
some
racialized
sexual
cultures
were
merely
ignored
by
an
emergent
focus
of
new
sexual
sciences
on
the
white
subjects
they
controlled.
People
of
color
already
experienced
sexualized
and
racialized
control
independently
of
their
targeting
by
new
sexual
sciences,
which
never
superseded
their
sexualized
colonial
regulation
as
racialized
peoples.
New
sexual
sciences
thus
bore
a
unique
relationship
to
their
white
subjects.
Jennifer
Terry
explains
that
as
sexual

75
sciences
defined
primitivity
as
a
queer
margin
of
civilized
sexuality,
perversions
were
classified
by
representing
white
subjects
as
degenerates
who
had
regressed
to
earlier
stages
of
racial
evolution.28
Thus,
white
subjects
could
indeed
appear,
as
racially
perverse
subjects,
to
have
escaped
prior
control
by
white
racial
knowledge
and
to
be
in
need
of
redoubled
effort
to
define
them
within
racialized
discourse
on
sexual
perversion.
Yet
their
very
narration
was
an
effect
of
being
produced
in
this
moment
as
new
objects
for
the
sexualized
power
relations
of
white-supremacist
settler
capitalism
and
empire.

The
racialization
of
white
subjects
of
sexology
by
discourse
on
sexual
primitivity
became
crucial
to
their
subsequent
efforts
as
members
of
a
multiracial
settler
society
to
gain
its
embrace,
respect,
and
citizenship.
Subjects
so
marked
reversed
the
discourses
on
perversion
that
described
them
to
proclaim
a
minoritized
form
of
sexual
normality
in
need
of
scientific
defense
to
achieve
social
recognition
and
rights
in
the
state.29
Yet
in
light
of
their
racialization,
such
narratives
also
portray
modern
sexuality
as
a
property
of
white
subjects
who
can
belong
to
white
civilization
but
for
accusations
of
sexual
primitivity.
Their
adaptations
of
discourse
on
primitivity
creatively
challenged
its
premises
when
applied
to
themselves,
but
did
not
necessarily
challenge
the
logic
of
colonial
discourse
in
broader
circulation-notably,
as
it
defined
citizenship
in
a
white
settler
state.
Thus,
while
their
critiques
did
mean
to
disturb
discourses
on
primitivity,
they
did
not
undermine
the
white-
supremacist
and
colonial
power
producing
such
discourses
and
that
remained
to
adapt
them
to
new
use.

I
am
less
interested,
however,
in
defining
racial
or
colonial
complicities
among
early
U.S.
sexual
minorities
than
in
asking
what
followed
their
embrace
of
primitivity
as
a
nature
in
need
of
civic
inclusion
in
a
white
settler
society;
for,
if
white
sexual
minorities
traversed
their
primitivity
in
order
to
claim
national
whiteness,
they
followed
a
normative
path
to
citizenship
for
white

76
settler
subjects.
Deloria's
argument
that
settler
citizenship
is
based
on
the
conquest
and
incorporation
of
primitivity-crucially,
as
disappeared
Native
American
primitivity
a
resource
that
settler
subjects
access
when
asserting
their
national
belonging.
This
is
reflected
in
the
scientific
promotion
of
civilizational
white
heteronormativity-as,
for
instance,
when
modern
sexuality
discourses
taught
white
men
to
tap
and
control
their
inheritance
of
primitivity.
G.
Stanley
Hall's
recapitulation
theory
of
play,
youth
health
movements
in
the
YMCA,
and
the
Boy
Scouts
of
America
invited
white
middle-class
boys
and
men
to
explore
primitive
developmental
stages,
including
via
Indian
impersonation,
as
methods
to
achieve
the
virile
sex
and
sexuality
of
civilized
adults.
They
then
performed
these
methods
educatively
with
white
working-
class
youths
to
lift
them
into
white
citizenship,
or
with
black
youths
to
conform
them
to
stages
of
manhood
preceding
the
civilizational
status
of
which
they
were
presumed
incapable
and
which
they
were
denied.30
In
the
United
States,
white
sexual
minorities
first
collectively
identified
and
organized
in
a
political
culture
that
validated
journeys
to
personhood
for
white
male
citizens
by
translating
primitive
roots
coded
as
Native
American
into
white
settler
modernity
and
its
hegemonic
role
in
a
multiracial
capitalist
settler
society.
Embracing
a
primitive
sexual
nature
linked
to
roots
within
Native
culture
articulated
the
defense
of
modern
sexual
minorities
with
normative
assertions
of
settler
citizenship.

In
the
history
of
U.S.
queer
modernities
as
white
articulations
of
settler
sexuality,
none
highlight
this
process
more
clearly
than
popularizations
of
the
colonial
object
berdache
to
define
their
nature
and
purpose
as
an
indigenized
minority
ready
for
integration
into
settler
freedom.
In
the
United
States,
sexological
and
homosexual
emancipation
discourse
on
berdache
in
the
early
to
mid-twentieth
century
traced
back
to
European
writing
that
correlated
sexual
minorities
to
primitivity,
in
particular
to
Native
Americans.
The
emergence
of
such
connections
from
the
mid-nineteenth
century
onward

77
affirms
Foucault's
account
that
Europe
witnessed
a
scientific
documentation
of
marginal
sexualities
for
biopolitical
regulation
even
as
their
targets
reversed
such
discourses
to
make
science
legitimate
their
nature
and
rights.
Karl
Heinrich
Ulrichs
and
Magnus
Hirschfeld
pursued
this
work
from
the
mid-
nineteenth
into
the
early
twentieth
centuries
in
what
would
be
known
as
homosexual
emancipationism.
Their
defenses
of
sexual
primitivity
in
otherwise
white
and
often
class-privileged
subjects-those
who
could
claim
civilizational
status
if
not
for
their
gendered
and
sexual
state-explained
that
state
as
a
nature
that
their
societies
could
accept
as
part
of
sexual
science.31
This
approach
cited
the
apparent
existence
and
acceptance
of
marginal
sexual
subjects
in
"primitive"
societies
as
evidence
that
their
nature
had
been
known
since
human
origins
and
could
be
scientifically
and
legally
affirmed.
Berdache
appeared
in
this
context
and
grew
in
significance
over
time.32
Invoking
ethnology's
authority,
sexologists
such
as
Richard
von
Krafft-Ebing
and
Havelock
Ellis
cited
accounts
of
Native
American
gender
and
sexuality,
which
other
scholars
codified
from
ethnological
evidence
for
their
use,
as
when
C.
G.
Seligmann
and
Ferdinand
Karsch-Haack
produced
anthropological
writing
linking
textual
citations
and
field
observations
of
berdache
for
use
by
sexologists.33
In
crossreferenced
writing-Seligmann
the
ethnologist
cites
key
claims
to
Ellis;
Ellis
the
sexologist
cites
ethnology
that
Seligmann
later
collated-
sexology
and
ethnology
reinforced
their
modern
scientific
authority
to
determine
sexual
and
primitive
truth.34
The
radical
thinker
and
sexual
rights
advocate
Edward
Carpenter
related
a
dynamic
emancipationist
argument
directly
from
berdache.35
Carpenter
promoted
the
"intermediate
type"
as
a
sexual
nature
based
in
male
homosexuality
along
two
trajectories:
a
"heroic"
sexual
desire
among
normal
men
tied
to
ancient
Greece,
and
a
gender-
transitive
male
homosexuality
defined
by
berdache.
His
focus
on
the
latter
agreed
with
Ulrichs
and
Hirschfeld
that
this
form
best
explained
sexual
intermediacy,
through
its
apparent
association
with
creativity
and
spirituality,

78
or,
in
Carpenter's
words,
with
the
role
of
"diviners"
mediating
the
mundane
and
spiritual
worlds.

In
these
commentaries,
a
familiar
figure
appeared
of
a
Native
American
male
formally
assuming
women's
social
roles
while
engaging
in
sexual
contact
with
other
males.
Interpreters
read
this
figure
in
different
ways:
Krafft-Ebing
described
it
as
an
intermediate
sex
in
a
feminized
male
body,
whereas
Ellis
framed
gender
variation
as
a
sign
of
normative
sex
imbued
by
same-sex
desire.
Yet,
while
being
cited
in
different
societies,
the
figure
evoked
Native
Americans
as
a
social
type
representing
the
acceptance
of
gender-transitive
male
and
same-sex
desire
in
primitive
societies.
Thus,
by
the
1930s,
European
scholars
using
a
reverse
discourse
had
defined
berdache
as
an
object
of
sexual
science
and
as
proof
that
the
sexual
primitivity
of
modern
sexual
minorities
bore
a
global
and
transhistorical
nature.
The
figure
was
evidence
that
across
vast
temporal
and
cultural
differences,
an
authentic
Indigenous
culture
communicated
the
nature
of
modern
sexual
minorities.
Crucially,
the
racial
and
gender
formation
of
these
discourses
is
evident
in
correlations
of
masculinism
and
whiteness
in
both
the
object
and
its
promotions.
The
violent
colonial
masculinism
projected
into
berdache,
and
expressed
in
its
use
during
sexual
colonization,
was
not
questioned
once
white
European
men
promoted
it,
putatively,
to
defend
"all"
sexual
minorities,
but
notably
to
draw
connections
between
their
lives
and
male
embodiment
and
desire.
Thus,
the
promotion
of
berdache
naturalized
specifically
masculinist
colonial
discourses
and
generic
or
specific
references
to
male
embodiment
and
desire
as
focal
points
of
the
sexual
nature
and
rights
defined
in
sexology
and
homosexual
emancipationism
by
white
men.
These
gendered,
racial,
and
colonial
contours
remained
in
all
later
citations
of
the
object:
at
times
as
naturalized
contexts
within
which
modern
sexual
minorities
became
imaginable,
but
often
as
recurrent
arenas
of
struggle
owing
to
their
recirculation
by
the
object's
travels.

79
 A
capacity
to
incorporate
indigeneity
as
a
primitive
past
for
thereby
indigenized
modern
white
Europeans
to
transcend
is
a
characteristic
of
colonial
discourse
on
primitivity.36
The
thread
I
wish
to
follow
here
differs
not
ontologically,
but
genealogically;
for,
if
a
mode
of
primitivism
ever
"arrives"
from
Europe
to
the
United
States,
it
will
immediately
articulate
the
primitivism
already
constituting
white-supremacist
settler
subjectivity
and
its
modernity,
nationality,
and
citizenship.
Sexological
and
emancipationist
discourse
on
berdache
"arrives"
in
the
United
States
as
the
very
settler
colonial
context
that
produced
the
accounts
it
cites.
Berdache
discourse
locates
white
"European"
and
other
racialized
sexual
subjects
in
relation
to
a
scientifically
generalized
indigeneity
that,
here,
announces
the
specifically
Native
American
locations
to
which
all
subjects
already
bear
landed
relationships.
These
relationships
will
be
apparent
if
discourse
on
berdache
is
recognized
as
multiple
and
transnational,
yet
distinctly
U.S.
American
when
it
is
adapted
into
this
specific
white
settler
colonial
context.

Sexual
minority
activists
in
the
United
States
engaged
discourse
on
berdache
by
translating
sexology
and
homosexual
emancipation
into
their
desire
to
claim
the
modern
sexual
rights
of
citizens
in
a
white
settler
state.
I
do
not
mean
to
imply
that
all
activists
agreed
with
the
hegemony
of
white
settler
colonialism.
Some
vociferously
opposed
all
structural
oppressions,
as
was
the
case
for
Harry
Hay's
Marxist-inspired
critiques
of
white
racism
and
capitalism
as
sources
of
antihomosexual
prejudice.37
Nevertheless,
adapting
berdache
to
justify
sexual
rights
for
U.S.
citizens
reflects
the
desire
of
white
sexual
minorities
to
absorb
Native
American
roots
as
their
own
in
order
to
claim-
even
critically-the
rights
of
settler
citizenship.
The
Mattachine
Society,
the
first
ongoing
advocacy
group
for
sexual
minority
rights
in
the
United
States,
was
formed
under
the
leadership
of
Hay
and
his
use
of
emancipationist
discourse
on
berdache
as
a
model
for
modern
social
acceptance
of
sexual
diversity.38
In
the
mid-twentieth
century,
Hay
and
U.S.
homophile
activists

80
continued
to
reference
sexology
and
emancipationist
writing
on
berdache
when
discussing
whether
sexual
minorities-gay
men
in
particular-could
be
said
to
possess
a
sexual
nature,
or,
inspired
by
Carpenter,
a
spiritual
nature.39
In
this
regard,
white
men
argued
on
behalf
of
all
sexual
minorities
that
their
civil
rights
and
national
belonging
were
affirmed
by
berdache.
This
affirmation
appeared
in
late-twentieth-century
gay
liberation
and
lesbian/gay
civil
rights
organizing
(discussed
in
chapters
2
and
3).
Such
claims
motivated
mid-
twentieth-century
U.S.
sexual
minority
politics
toward
seeking
political
inclusion
in
a
settler
society
that
was
still
consolidating
its
rule
over
Native
peoples,
while
framing
Native
peoples'
importance
to
them
as
a
disappeared
history
that
non-Natives
sought
to
incorporate
as
their
own.
The
hegemonic
effect
of
these
discourses
was
to
ground
modern
sexual
minority
identities
and
politics
in
the
appropriation
of
Native
culture
by
white
men
who
then
represented
the
sexual
nature
of
a
universal
social
minority.
Despite
appearing
to
reference
to
Native
people,
the
activists'
purpose
was
to
define
themselves
in
relation
to
a
primitivity
projected
onto
Native
Americans
whose
disappearance
they
could
recover
and
redeem.
Berdache
became
a
naturalized
backdrop
to
scientific
and
activist
claims
on
sexual
modernity,
and
even
its
absence
from
citation
remained
consistent
with
its
function:
to
offer
a
Native
past
that
sexual
minorities
could
incorporate
in
their
quest
for
sexual
modernity.
Embracing
berdache
did
not
mean
"going
Native"
-although
that
form
of
primitivism
could
be
one
of
its
effects.
Rather,
it
allowed
white
subjects
in
a
settler
society,
led
by
white
men,
to
answer
their
settler
colonial
inheritance
by
accepting
Native
roots
as
theirs
to
possess
and
replace.

Berdache
is
just
one
of
many
figures
of
Native
disappearance
that
produces
queer
modernities
in
the
United
States
as
normatively
white
claims
on
settler
citizenship.
The
settler
colonialism
conditioning
the
object
will
remain
naturalized
and
hegemonic
among
U.S.
queer
subjects,
cultures,
and
politics
until
that
condition
is
addressed.
Claims
on
queer
modernity
by
non-Native

81
people
of
color
at
times
disrupt
settler
colonial
power
by
confronting
white
supremacy
or
colonization.
Also,
for
many
queers
of
color,
a
history
of
mixed
heritage
with
Native
peoples
complicates
stories
of
Native
disappearance
and
an
assumed
non-Native
relationship
to
modern
sexuality.
But
my
reading
of
queer
claims
within
settler
colonial
power
relations
indicates
that
even
antiracist
and
anticolonial
work
by
queers
of
color
may
become
compatible
with
settler
projects,
notably
when
portraying
sexual
modernity
as
multiracial
and
transnational
to
achieve
non-Native
queer
belonging
in
a
multicultural
settler
state.
Displacing
any
such
effects
can
start
by
locating
U.S.
queer
modernities
in
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
that
still
impose
non-
Native,
normatively
white,
and
settler
relationships
on
Native
peoples,
and
by
efforts
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
to
denaturalize
settler
colonialism.
In
the
face
of
non-Native
queer
projects
that
invite
embrace
by
the
settler
state,
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
have
critically
confronted
discourse
on
their
disappearance-even
as
icons
of
queer
salvation-
to
pursue
their
own
and
their
peoples'
resistance
to
the
colonial
conditions
of
life
on
Native
lands.

Native
Resistance
and
Oueer
Modernities

Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activisms
challenge
non-Native
queer
modernities
and
settler
colonialism
when
they
recall
legacies
of
resistance
and
form
modern
Native
identities,
cultures,
and
politics
that
affirm
the
survival
and
resurgence
of
Native
peoples.

Deborah
Miranda
and
Owo-Li
Driskill
invoke
both
the
historical
violence
of
attempted
erasure
and
collective
reassertions
of
embodied
subjectivity
as
methods
for
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
to
resist
the
colonial
education
of
desire.40
They
suggest
that
these
resistances
are
not
unique
to
the
present
but,
across
important
differences
in
historical
and
cultural
context,

82
form
"dissent
lines"
(Linda
Tuhiwai
Smith's
term)
that
locate
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
in
genealogies
of
anticolonialism.41
The
histories
recounted
by
Tortorici,
Williams,
and
Roscoe
portray
Native
people
resisting
the
colonial
education
of
desire
by
eluding
control
and
escaping
punishment,
harboring
one
another
from
detection
and
harm,
organizing
collective
protests,
and
raising
new
generations
in
traditional
knowledge
despite
colonial
attempts
to
regulate
Native
life.
If
resistance
appeared
in
the
refusal
of
Osh-
Tisch
or
others
to
relinquish
their
identities
and
roles,
it
also
took
the
form
of
collective
responses
to
the
targeting
of
particular
persons.
As
Jace
Weaver
has
noted,
Native
resistance
to
colonization
has
performed
a
"communitism"
that
links
collective
survival
to
activism
for
justice.
Histories
of
sexual
colonization
show
Native
peoples
resisting
by
recognizing
that
targeting
of
individuals
sought
to
educate
entire
communities
in
new
regimes
as
a
means
to
establish
colonial
control.
For
instance,
forcing
botes
into
masculine
dress
and
parading
them
as
labor
proclaimed
colonial
power
over
the
entire
Crow
community
and
its
values.
But
Chief
Pretty
Eagle's
defiance
of
the
agent
and
his
defense
of
the
botes
in
the
1890s
reaffirmed
those
values
by
marking
gender
and
sexuality
as
embodying
the
very
traditions
that
the
Crow
elders
chose
to
defend
as
a
condition
of
the
community's
collective
sovereignty.42
In
turn,
the
girls
at
the
Carlisle
Indian
School
who
protected
the
nadleeh
youth
defended
the
truth
of
their
loved
one's
life,
even
as
they
recognized
that
a
colonial
intent
to
erase
that
life
also
sought
to
erase
their
interdependence.
Neither
their
inability
to
protect
their
cousin
nor
their
loss
can
overwrite
the
fact
that
their
resistance
dignified
their
identity
as
Native
people
and
sustained
their
collective
ties.
All
these
stories
show
that
the
lives
the
term
"berdache"
attempted
to
name
did
not
represent
a
singular
sexual
minority
but
the
webs
of
relationship
and
solidarity
within
Native
communities.

These
histories
are
important
to
accounts
of
queer
modernities
not
merely
as
a
historical
precedent
but
because
of
the
way
they
persist
within
the
settler

83
colonial
hegemony
of
modern
sexuality.
Foucault
acknowledged
that
the
discourses
and
institutions
of
modern
sexuality
formed
by
subjugating
knowledges
of
bodies
and
pleasures
that
exceeded
its
logic.43
Subjugation
produced
those
knowledges
as
elided
or
forgotten
elements
within
the
discursive
elaborations
of
modern
sexuality,
thereby
altering
how
they
may
be
known
among
the
"many
silences"
defining
its
power.
Nevertheless,
Foucault
suggests,
the
production
of
subjugated
knowledges
in
modern
sexual
regimes
presented
the
ever-present
possibility
of
their
resurgence.
This
resistance
would
transpire
in
the
field
of
power
established
by
sexual
modernity.
But
subjugated
knowledges
recalled
knowledges
that
were
never
entirely
imaginable
on
modern
sexuality's
terms,
despite
its
purported
totalization.
Thus,
to
pursue
subjugated
knowledges
as
a
mode
of
resistance
is
precisely
to
negotiate
the
power
relations
of
modern
sexuality.
But
subjugating
knowledges
also
fractures
the
ruse
of
totalization
in
modern
sexuality,
which
then
must
police
its
own
interruption
by
logics
that
exceed
what
it
purports
to
assert
and
contain.

Organizing
among
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
developed
in
the
late
twentieth
century
precisely
by
recalling
such
subjugated
knowledges
of
embodiment,
desire,
kinship,
and
peoplehood
in
modes
of
language,
memory,
and
relationality
that
were
discrepant
from
colonial
modern
definitions
of
sexuality
and
gender.
Two-Spirit
identity
is
a
modern
Native
recollection
of
subjugated
traditional
knowledges
that
contests
the
terms
of
colonial
modernity-in
anthropological
discourse,
queer
colonial
desires,
and
the
heteropatriarchy
of
settler
and
Native
societies-through
a
resurgence
of
Native
peoplehood.
Yet,
describing
Two-Spirit
with
its
many
ascribed
meanings
as
a
Native
queer
modernity
does
not
frame
it
only
in
terms
of
the
present.
By
recalling
and
reimagining
subjugated
knowledges
that
exceed
the
temporality
of
settler
colonialism,
Two-Spirit
does
not
merely
imagine
or
invoke
their
existence
but
connects
genealogically
to
their
continuation

84
through
time.
The
muliplicity
of
languages,
memories,
and
ontologies
of
embodiment,
desire,
kinship,
and
collectivity
invoked
by
Two-Spirit
already
carried
a
power
to
provincialize
Western
universalisms
(of
sex,
race,
nation,
humanity)
and
displace
their
imperialist
ruses.
Perhaps
this
is
why
TwoSpirit
people
were
among
the
first
Indigenous
people
targeted
for
settler
colonial
erasure,
and
why
heteropatriarchy
has
remained
foundational
to
sustaining
conquest
and
settlement.

The
discrepancy
of
Two-Spirit
identity
when
proposed
by
Native
queer
people
arose
partly
in
its
critical
response
to
anthropological
writing
on
berdache
and
to
non-Native
queer
desires
for
Indigenous
history.
Yet
historicizing
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activism
as
if
it
arose
only
in
response
to
colonial
hegemony
suggests
that
Native
resistance
is
always
already
derivative
of
what
it
resists:
the
totalizing
power
of
settler
colonization.
In
fact,
by
definition,
settler
colonialism
is
a
relationship
between
something
that
may
attempt
totalization
and
all
that
it
attempts
(forever
incompletely)
to
suppress.
Indeed,
settler
colonialism's
inherent
relationality
continually
invokes
interdependence,
not
independence-whether
that
to
which
it
relates
seems
present
or
absent,
in
the
imagination
or
in
interactions
with
those
who
survive
attempted
erasure.
Settler
colonialism
cannot
create
totalizing
forms
of
power
to
wholly
produce
Native
peoples
as
constructs
of
a
colonial
gaze
or
as
mere
reinterpreters
of
colonial
ideas
about
"themselves."
A
perception
that
this
is
all
that
is
possible
is
the
logic
of
elimination
at
work,
but
it
remains
naturalized
in
the
settler
academy.

As
a
contemporary
category,
Two-Spirit
has
implications
for
anticolonial
critiques
that
denaturalize
settler
colonialism.
Its
effort
to
link
Native
queer
people
to
genealogies
of
subjugated
knowledge
challenges
the
temporal
trap
of
colonial
modernity
that
would
locate
Native
people
in
an
untouchable
authenticity
or
an
inevitable
amalgamation
with
settlers.
Two-Spirit
articulates

85
epistemologies
that,
by
being
recollected,
are
no
longer
forgettable,
placing
Native
people
in
a
relationship
to
languages,
memories,
and
ontologies
that
are
reimagined
in
a
colonial
frame
while
showing
that
that
frame
was
never
complete.
In
the
process,
Two-Spirit
identity
shows
the
power
of
settler
colonialism
to
be
relational,
as
it
displaces
the
purported
universality,
inevitability,
and
finality
of
settler
colonialism.
Thus,
Two-Spirit
identity,
like
other
Native
queer
modernities,
does
not
derive
from
non-Native
queer
projects,
or
any
colonial
modern
project,
even
as
its
formation
and
practice
are
entirely
relational
to
what
it
contests.

In
this
light,
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activisms
can
be
seen
to
engage,
and
contest,
the
settler
colonial
terms
of
modern
sexuality
in
ways
that
remain
distinct
from
the
normative
affirmation
of
those
terms
in
nonNative
queer
modernities.
This
occurs
in
their
discrepant
engagement
with
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
that
defines
modern
sexuality
in
the
United
States
as
a
"contact
zone."
Following
Mary
Louise
Pratt,
this
term
invokes
Europeans
and
Indigenous
peoples
in
colonial
situations
producing
conflictual
yet
creative
exchanges,
in
which
"conditions
of
coercion,
radical
inequality,
and
intractable
conflict"
generate
the
interactive,
improvisational
dimensions
of
colonial
encounters."44
Theorizing
modern
sexuality
as
a
contact
zone
has
several
implications.
First,
recognizing
that
settler
colonialism
has
not
ended,
"contact"
is
recognizable
not
only
in
the
past
or
in
local
spaces
but
as
pervasive
throughout
settler
society
and
all
that
transpires
within
it.
Indeed,
modern
sexuality
is
the
contact
zone,
with
all
its
manifestations
meaningfully
contextualized
by
a
relationality
of
"Natives"
to
"settlers"
on
colonized
land.
Just
as
all
modern
sexual
subjects
and
practices
in
the
United
States
arose
amid
settler
colonization
and
narratives
of
Native
disappearance,
Native
people
articulated
modern
sexuality
as
a
colonial
project
while
countering
it
with
distinctive
Indigenous
knowledges
and
modes
of
resistance.

86
 Second,
modern
sexuality
acts
as
a
contact
zone
independently
of
encounters
among
non-Native
and
Native
people.
For
non-Natives,
sexual
modernity
produces
them
as
subjects
of
contact
because
this
modernity
presumes
Native
disappearance,
by
citing
Native
sexual
pasts
to
inspire
in
non-
Natives
a
sexual
future.
For
Native
people,
in
turn,
sexual
modernity
incites
contact
by
presenting
itself
as
the
modernity
of
settlers.
Even
Native
people
who
embrace
it
do
not
erase
its
historical
ties
to
colonization,
while
those
who
critique
it
disturb
its
conflation
of
coloniality
with
modernity
and
create
alternative
spaces
for
defining
Native
modernities,
including
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activisms.

Thus,
and
third,
while
the
image
of
a
contact
zone
suggests
that
colonization
is
its
context,
settler
formations
in
fact
are
being
displaced
by
decolonizing
Native
claims
on
modernity.
While
they
are
interdependent
with
non-Native
queer
cultures
and
politics,
Native
queer
modernities
do
not
derive
from
them.
Rather,
they
creatively
articulate
modern
sexuality
as
settler
sexuality
by
reimagining
Indigenous
knowledges
of
personhood
and
community
that
never
ceased
to
trouble
the
supposed
universality
of
settler
claims.
This
book
traces
the
cultural
and
political
effects
of
this
discrepancy
in
Native
queer
claims
on
modernity
as
a
counterpoint
to
the
ubiquitous,
but
not
all-powerful,
effects
of
settler
sexual
culture.

Perpetually
negotiating
the
contact
zone
of
sexual
modernity
but
without
being
derivative
of
contact,
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
projects
mark
the
contingency,
contradiction,
and
potential
transformation
of
settler
colonialism.
Their
effects
arise
as
Native
queer
people
negotiate,
in
Tsing's
term,
their
"friction"
with
settler
knowledges
and
power
relations,
including
in
conversation
with
non-Native
queer
formations.
The
very
inevitability
of
such
conversations
is
what
returns
them
to
a
state
of
friction:
the
more
they
produce
and
sharpen
their
discrepancies,
the
more
consistent
their

87
interactions
become.
In
the
process,
whether
long-standing
or
of
recent
invention,
Native
queer
modernities
join
all
Native
resistances
to
settler
sexuality
in
denaturalizing
settlement.
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
thus
trace
distinctive
intellectual
histories
linking
subjugated
knowledges
to
current
reimaginings.
Their
claims
mark
and
displace
the
conditions
of
settler
society
in
which
all
non-Native
queer
modernities
arise,
and
thereby
propose
routes
to
decolonization
that
address
both
Native
and
non-Native
people.

88
AMID
THE
MANY
TALES
OF
INDIGENEITY
animating
queer
modernities
in
the
United
States,
one
became
iconic:
the
colonial
object
berdache.
While
appearing
to
describe
Native
Americans,
berdache
presented
a
primordial
mirror
to
the
civilizational
modernity
of
colonial
and
settler
subjects.
It
cohered
an
object
of
knowledge
that
described
a
gender-transitive
and
homosexual
subject,
defined
by
male
embodiment,
who
received
social
recognition
in
Native
American
societies.
Over
time,
the
object
projected
a
uniformity
of
sex,
gender,
sexuality,
and
indigeneity
that
let
it
represent
principles
of
human
nature
and
culture.
Disagreement
over
its
definition
regularly
called
its
qualities
into
question,
but
that
very
deliberation
promulgated
berdache
as
a
key
object
of
colonial
desire
for
Indigenous
and
sexual
truth.

This
chapter
examines
conversations
on
berdache
as
spaces
that
produced
queer
modernities
for
non-Native
and
Native
people
in
close
relationship
in
the
late
twentieth
century.
Berdache
became
popularized
by
debates
in
the
United
States
over
the
cultural
or
historical
scope
of
modern
queer
subjects
that
appeared
in
textbooks,
anthologies,
and
scholarly
and
popular
texts
in
anthropology
and
in
gay,
lesbian,
trans,
and
queer
studies.
A
generation
or
more
of
university
students,
human
service
professionals,
and
general
readers
interpreted
queer
histories
and
cultures
by
considering
the
relationship
they
bore
to
berdache.
Among
the
many
effects
of
the
object's
circulation,
deliberating
Native
history
became
a
key
medium
for
conceptualizing
queer

89
modernity.

Three
contexts
proved
crucial
to
the
career
of
the
object
berdache.
Two
are
obvious:
gay
and
lesbian
anthropology,
and
critical
engagement
with
anthropology
by
Native
queer
activists,
including
after
the
adoption
of
TwoSpirit
identity
in
the
1990s.
The
other
may
be
less
obvious:
back-to-
theland
counterculturism
where
non-Native
gay
men
imagined
radical
cultures
and
politics.
Among
the
myriad
spaces
of
conversation
on
berdache,
these
three
highlight
a
prehistory
into
the
1970s
that
shaped
debates
on
berdache
among
non-Native
and
Native
queers
until
the
end
of
the
century.
Each
space
of
conversation
engaged
one
or
both
of
the
others,
whether
it
acknowledged
this
interdependence
or
not,
and
with
resonances
that
appear
throughout
this
book.
Each
also
indicates
that,
rather
than
being
contained,
its
debates
incited
broader
conversations
beyond
the
object
berdache
that
weighed
the
modernity
of
non-Native
and
Native
queers
in
relation
to
the
histories
of
Native
culture
and
settlement.
Thus,
while
I
recognize
berdache
as
an
object
of
knowledge,
I
interpret
it
less
as
an
object
than
as
a
context
of
conversation:
a
cipher
for
a
multifaceted
discursive
regime
whose
colonial
hegemony
remained
contested
while
conditioning
non-Native
and
Native
claims
on
queer
modernity.
A
history
of
berdache
demonstrates
that
Native
queer
activism
decisively
interrupted
it.
Yet
the
object's
logic
still
permeates
popular
and
scientific
conversations
on
queer
modernities,
inviting
critical
vigilance
and
deeper
investigation
of
its
effects.

Progressive
Sexual
Science:
Berdache
and
the
Anthropology
of
Homosexuality

In
the
mid-twentieth
century,
U.S.
cultural
anthropology's
heritage
as
a
settler
science
of
American
Indians
transformed
into
a
popular
project
promoting
relativist
accounts
of
cultural
difference.
In
the
wake
of
Franz
Boas's
public
critiques
of
race
essentialism,
his
students
Alfred
Kroeber,
Ruth
Benedict,
and

90
Margaret
Mead
offered
ethnography
as
a
method
to
translate
primitive
culture
for
the
edification
of
modern
society.
Their
relativism
maintained
a
civilizational
difference
between
the
societies
they
portrayed
and
the
Western,
if
not
settler
societies,
whose
modernity
was
to
be
educated
by
primitive
peoples'
insights
into
the
human
condition.
Mead
notably
invited
her
U.S.
audiences
to
incorporate
such
knowledge
into
the
progressive
promotion
of
respect
for
human
differences.
Her
writings
on
gender
and
sexuality
presented
berdache
as
part
of
anthropology's
application
of
primitivity
to
the
self-
fashioning
of
modern
subjects
of
a
settler
society.

The
popularity
of
berdache
was
enhanced
when
gay
and
lesbian
politics
articulated
progressive
legacies
of
U.S.
anthropology.
Gay
and
lesbian
and
allied
anthropologists
in
the
1970s
began
to
critique
sexual
conservatism
in
anthropology
and
U.S.
society
by
forming
the
Anthropological
Research
Group
on
Homosexuality
(ARGOH),
later
renamed
the
Society
of
Lesbian
and
Gay
Anthropologists
(SOLGA).
Under
these
names,
twentieth-century
scholars
linked
the
anthropology
of
homosexuality
to
the
pursuit
of
sexual
minority
politics
within
anthropology.
One
of
their
first
achievements
was
a
host
of
new
scholarship
on
berdache,
which
by
the
late
1980s
circulated
as
an
ideal
object
to
inspire
accommodating
variation
in
modern
societies.
ARGOH's
predominantly
white
scholarly
network
was
also
reflected
among
anthropologists
of
berdache
whose
work
was
later
reevaluated
by
Native
and
non-Native
critics.
Although
by
the
turn
of
the
century
changes
in
anthropology
and
queer
politics
shifted
SOLGA
beyond
the
Meadian
defense
o f
gender
and
sexual
variation,
a
first
generation
of
anthropologists
of
homosexuality
established
disciplinary
authority
by
linking
sexual
minority
politics
to
progressive
anthropology
through
scholarship
on
berdache.'

U.S.
anthropology
of
homosexuality
linked
research
on
homosexuality
to
the
activist
defense
of
gay
and
lesbian
anthropologists.
In
the
1970s,
the

91
American
Anthropological
Association
(AAA)
and
other
professional
societies
became
sites
of
challenge
to
the
medical
pathologization
of
homosexuality
and
of
the
defense
of
gay
and
lesbian
scientists.'
At
the
A AA
business
meeting,
Clark
Taylor
proposed
three
resolutions
affirming
that
the
organization
"recognizes
the
legitimacy
and
immediate
importance"
of
research
on
homosexuality,
"urges
the
protection
of
homosexual
anthropologists"
from
discrimination,
and
goes
on
record
as
urging
the
immediate
legalization
of
all
consensual
sexual
acts."
All
three
were
approved,
though
only
narrowly,
in
a
subsequent
membership
vote.'
Little
further
organizing
followed
until
Steve
Holtzman
and
Steve
Weinstein
organized
a
first
AAA
panel
on
the
topic
"Homosexuality
in
Cross-Cultural
Perspective"
at
the
1974
meetings,
with
Margaret
Mead
serving
as
respondent.'
Participants
recognized
Mead
not
only
for
legitimating
their
work
but
also
for
affirming
a
link
between
the
study
of
sexual
diversity
and
its
place
within
scholars'
lives.
As
Taylor
later
remarked
of
her
quietly
acknowledged
sexual
history,
that
was
Margaret
Mead
at
her
best
...
relatively
open
about
her
bisexuality,
absolutely
tremendously
supportive."'
Attempts
to
coordinate
AAA
researchers
on
homosexuality
continued
until
the
1978
establishment
of
ARGOH
as
an
AAA
interest
group
(although
not
an
official
AAA
section).'

While
the
ARGOH
charter
stated
its
core
aim
as
"to
encourage
and
to
support
anthropological
research
on
homosexual
behavior,"
its
initial
work
organized
members
to
shift
the
culture
and
politics
of
their
discipline.'
A
newsletter
published
proposals
for
panels,
conferences,
and
books,
as
well
as
reports
of
ongoing
research,
and
raised
the
profile
of
researchers
who
served
as
writers
or
officers.
This
paid
off:
while
in
1979
Joseph
Carrier
reflected
that
"anthropological
research
on
homosexuality
is
meager...
it
is
therefore
difficult
to
organize
the
few
papers
that
people
proffer
into
a
coherent
symposium
theme,"
Walter
Williams
in
1984
announced
that
ARGOH
members
had
hosted
four
AAA
panels
on
sexuality,
gender,
and
AIDS,
and
that,
"combined

92
with
sessions
on
women,
questions
of
sexuality
and
gender
were
so
prominent
...
that
they
were
practically
a
theme
of
the
meetings."8
Beyond
promoting
scholarship,
ARGOH
had
an
activist
profile.
After
Larry
Gross
invited
Evelyn
Blackwood
to
be
female
copresident
("to
make
sure
that
women's
issues
receive
the
attention
necessary,
and
to
express
our
desire
for
more
female
membership
and
participation"),
Blackwood
encouraged
ARGOH
to
become
the
politically
active
group
it
was
originally
formed
to
be"
by
helping
the
various
minority
groups
of
the
AAA
join
forces
in
a
coalition
to
consider
issues
relevant
to
all
our
groups."9
Her
sentiment
led
to
the
formation
of
an
ARGOH
Political
Action
Committee,
which
supported
Paul
Kutsche
in
his
(unsuccessful)
1983
bid
to
join
the
AAA
Committee
on
Ethics
on
a
platform
of
adding
sexual
orientation
to
the
AAA
nondiscrimination
statement.
When
the
Committee
on
Ethics
responded
with
AAA
board
approval
by
proposing
to
rescind
all
antidiscrimination
protections,
it
provoked
widespread
protest
among
the
membership.
Kutsche
and
AAA
section
leaders
put
forward
a
"Resolution
on
Minority
Anthropologists"
directing
the
organization
to
affirm
prior
protections
and
add
sexual
orientation,
age,
and
disability,
which
was
adopted
by
the
membership
in
1986.
Afterward,
Kutsche
observed
that
`ARGOH
is
now
part
of
American
anthropology's
consciousness,"
as
a
group
with
a
"ten-year
history
of
defending
gay
and
lesbian
causes
...
which
the
executive
office
in
Washington
...
listens
to
with
respect."10

By
promoting
research
on
homosexuality
and
defending
gay
and
lesbian
anthropologists,
ARGOH
made
sexual
minority
politics
a
basis
for
anthropological
knowledge
production.
ARGOH's
first
members
attested
that
scholars
of
homosexuality
were
not
just
gay
men
and
lesbians,
while
many
gay
and
lesbian
anthropologists
who
did
not
study
homosexuality
joined
ARGOH
out
of
solidarity
with
other
lesbians
and
gay
men.
Yet
tensions
quickly
arose
around
ARGOH's
projects.
On
the
one
hand,
gay
and
lesbian
anthropologists
worked
in
a
relativist
tradition
that
defended
cultural
differences
against
the

93
imposition
of
scholarly
bias.
This
directed
them
to
qualify
or
restrict
their
use
of
culturally
specific
terms
such
as
"homosexual,"
"gay,"
or
"lesbian"
as
analytic
categories.
On
the
other
hand,
ARGOH
scholars
pursued
projects
that
came
to
be
defined
ever
more
explicitly
as
"lesbian
or
gay
topics.""
This
direction
narrowed
the
potential
array
of
culture
that
ARGOH
would
study
to
one
matching
the
interests
of
U.S.
lesbians
and
gay
men.
By
exerting
their
scientific
authority,
lesbian
and
gay
anthropologists
could
represent
self-selected
"topics"
as
if
they
constituted
a
natural
bundling
of
culture.
Many
ARGOH
affiliates
were
aware
of
this
dilemma
and
pursued
studies
that
challenged
the
expectations
of
modern
sexual
minorities.12
But
if
even
these
could
be
promoted
and
defended
by
ARGOH
under
the
phrase
"lesbian
or
gay
topics,"
a
disturbing
conflation
of
modern
sexual
minorities
with
their
own
interruption
let
even
their
displacement
re-center
them
in
anthropological
knowledge
about
sexuality
and
gender.

I
contend
that,
rather
than
presenting
a
conundrum,
this
conflict
between
cultural
variety
and
sexual
politics
energized
ARGOH,
in
two
crucial
ways.
First,
the
ARGOH
charter
grounded
its
research
agenda
in
an
argument
that
"`homosexuality'-in
the
sense
of
an
exclusive
sexual
preference
for
persons
of
one's
own
gender-is
descriptive
of
a
minority
of
the
members
of
any
Here,
by
arguing
that
human
truth
and
its
scientific
study
both
correspond
to
a
minoritizing
theory
of
sexuality,
ARGOH's
promotion
of
science
and
of
gay
and
lesbian
political
interests
logically
meshed.
Second,
ARGOH's
work
reached
its
fullest
expression
by
modeling
U.S.
cultural
anthropology
in
the
legacies
of
Benedict
and
Mead.
Their
work
had
portrayed
sexual
variation
in
primitive
cultures
as
lessons
to
a
modern
settler
society
(excluding
the
Native
peoples
it
occupies)
to
accept
its
(non-Native)
gender
and
sexual
diversity.
ARGOH
described
sexuality
and
gender
among
its
objects-primarily
Indigenous
societies
and
Native
Americans
most
prominently-to
promote
an
acceptance
of
lesbians
and
gay
men
within
U.S.
society,
and,
by
extrapolation,

94
in
other
societies.
The
primitive
to
modern,
Native
to
non-Native
directionality
of
ARGOH's
educative
work
renewed
a
midcentury
U.S.
anthropological
project
as
a
modern
settler
science,
reconfigured
to
serve
a
modern
and
settler
sexual
minority
politics.

In
this
context,
gay
and
lesbian
anthropology
found
a
focal
point
in
berdache.
A
study
of
the
anthropological
record
for
evidence
of
gender
and
sexual
diversity
immediately
encountered
berdache.
Although
neither
Mead
nor
Benedict
wrote
a
book
on
berdache,
both
generalized
it
as
an
object
of
primitive
sexuality
and
gender
that
could
explain
a
variety
of
sexual
cultures.
Their
uses
of
the
object
match
Mead's
reading:
"among
many
American
Indian
tribes
the
berdache,
the
man
who
dressed
and
lived
as
a
woman,
was
a
recognized
social
institution."
The
object's
gendered
relationship
to
sexuality
remained
a
matter
of
debate:
Benedict
framed
berdache
as
"homosexual,"
only
to
note
instances
when
that
reading
did
not
apply;
Mead
said
that
berdache
reflected
a
malleability
in
gender
beyond
"sexual
inversion,"
although
she
thought
they
often
were
linked.14
Yet
both
invoked
berdache
as
proof
that
gender
and
sexual
diversity
could
be
Anthropologists
cited
their
work
as
a
benchmark
for
distinguishing
cultural
systems
as
affirming
or
rejecting
gender
and
sexual
diversity.
In
1951,
Clellan
Ford
and
Frank
Beach
rejected
the
pathologization
of
homosexuality
by
centering
berdache
in
their
anthropological
account
of
human
variation.
Introduced
as
"the
most
common
form
of
institutionalized
homosexuality,"
they
define
berdache
as
"a
male
who
dresses
like
a
woman,
performs
women's
tasks,
and
adopts
some
aspects
of
the
feminine
role
in
sexual
behavior
with
male
partners."
They
note
that
"less
frequently
a
woman
dresses
like
a
man
and
seeks
to
adopt
the
male
s e x
that,
while
possibly
related,
such
practices
fall
outside
the
term
berdache.16
The
few
other
commentators
who
clarified
berdache
for
anthropologists
at
this
time
also
described
a
male-centered
role
accommodating
sexual
variation
as
one
that
called
for
scientific

95
understanding.'
Thus,
in
a
trajectory
beginning
in
the
1930s,
U.S.
anthropologists
used
berdache
to
deploy
a
modern
theory
of
sexuality
and
gender
in
which
subjects
"express"
a
natural
sexuality
and
sex,
which
societies
do
not
produce
but
simply
recognize
through
affirmation
or
rejection.
In
the
process,
by
making
Native
Americans
a
benchmark
of
affirmation
in
relation
to
which
other
cultures
appear
constricting,
berdache
implicitly
educated
its
audiences
to
rethink
gender
and
sexual
norms
in
their
own,
implicitly
non-
Native,
societies.

Lesbian
and
gay
anthropologists
both
sustained
and
shifted
the
object's
coherence
when
they
applied
berdache
to
new
work.
They
shared
an
interest
in
challenging
prevailing
beliefs
about
homosexuality
by
reframing
berdache
and
anthropology
around
new
questions,
especially
gender.
When
Charles
Callender
and
Lee
Kochems
sought
to
cull
a
comprehensive
data
set
from
earlier
anthropological
writing
on
berdache,
they
questioned
the
centrality
of
homosexuality
by
describing
an
object
defined
by
"gendermixing"
among
males
who
adopt
"dress,
occupations,
and
behavior"
of
females
in
the
absence
of
sexual
relations
with
others
occupying
these
statuses.""'
By
codifying
cultures
as
data
within
authoritative
claims
on
human
variation
that
took
berdache
as
a
descriptor
of
social
life,
Callender
and
Kochems
renewed
classic
U.S.
anthropology
through
a
recursive
process-seeking
Indigenous
culture
in
the
object;
seeking
the
object
in
Indigenous
cultures-that
narrowed
their
claims
even
as
the
object's
invention
remained
largely
unexamined.
Two
years
prior
to
their
writing,
Harriet
Whitehead's
account
of
berdache
deferred
its
interpretation
as
homosexuality
or
"`Meadian'
cultural
variation"
by
asking,
after
Gayle
Rubin,
how
sex/gender
systems
create
stratification
in
modes
of
labor
and
value.
Yet
Whitehead's
feminist
discussion
of
gender
left
intact
the
object's
masculinist
presumptions
when
she
described
it
as
a
status
created
from
men's
social
"advantage"
in
response
to
the
possibility
that
women,
within
their
own
department,
might
be
onto
a
good
thing.
It
was
into
this
unsettling

96
breach
that
the
berdache
institution
was
hurled."
She
suggests
that
if
persons
in
a
berdache
role
were
praised
for
proficiency
in
women's
work,
this
left
women
"subtly
insulted"
in
their
"anatomic
aspect,"
while
"through
him,
ordinary
men
might
reckon
that
they
still
held
advantage
that
was
anatomically
given
and
inalterable.""
Here
Whitehead
repeats
the
colonial
origin
story
of
berdache
as
a
product
of
Indigenous
men's
prerogative,
only
now
not
to
practice
perversion
but
to
appropriate
women's
spheres.
Whether
or
not
she
intended
it,
her
assertion
echoes
radical
feminist
suspicions
that
male-to-female
transsexuals
enact
a
conspiratorial
agenda
of
male
appropriation
of
women's
power.20
Whitehead
expresses
a
misreading
of
berdache
as
Indigenous
culture
rather
than
as
an
object
invented
to
project
colonial
and
masculinist
expectations
onto
Indigenous
peoples.
Still,
whereas
Callender
and
Kochems
echoed
Ford
and
Beach
by
codifying
Indigenous
people
as
data
for
progressive
anthropology,
Whitehead
was
the
first
scholar
to
question
the
Meadian
approach
by
turning
from
culture
"accommodating"
sexual
and
gender
diversity
to
asking
how
it
was
produced
within
power
relations.

While
circulation
of
Whitehead's
work
in
anthropology
and
lesbian/
gay
studies
focused
discussion
of
berdache
in
academia,
the
object's
broader
popularization
followed
the
work
of
Evelyn
Blackwood
and
Walter
Williams,
who
reframed
its
masculinism
in
light
of
Blackwood's
feminist
critiques
while
presenting
the
best
evidence
yet
of
ARGOH's
scholarly
leadership.
Blackwood
was
one
of
the
first
ARGOH
members
to
critically
engage
the
group's
focus
on
gay
men
and
"continued
emphasis
on
male
homosexual
behavior
as
a
general
model
for
theoretical
analysis.""
As
editor
of
a
special
issue
on
the
anthropology
of
homosexuality
in
The
Journal
of
Homosexuality
(1985),
later
published
as
The
Many
Faces
of
Homosexuality
(1986),
Blackwood
and
her
contributors
collated
old
data
and
set
new
research
models
that
included
"

97
[bringing]
women's
sexual
behavior
within
the
purview
of
the
current
discussion
on
homosexuality
by
separating
it
from
the
historical
construction
of
male
homosexuality
and
by
examining
the
particular
cultural
contexts
of
lesbian
behavior."22
Blackwood
had
already
pursued
this
goal
by
questioning
the
object's
masculinism
in
her
focus
on
"female
cross-gender
roles"
in
historical
Native
American
societies.23
Her
rereading
of
anthropological
texts
through
the
lens
of
gender
not
only
defined
berdache
apart
from
homosexuality
but
also
discarded
the
object
before
addressing
the
female
embodiment
it
erased.
In
discussing
historical
accounts
of
Native
women
chiefs,
women
identified
as
or
acting
as
warriors,
and
women
taking
roles
apart
from
"woman"
or
"man,"
Blackwood
focused
on
"gender"
as
a
field
of
power
relations
that
enables
multiple
social
roles.
Her
application
of
feminist
theory
to
distinguish
between
various
western
and
Plains
Native
societies
according
to
their
degree
of
gender
egalitarianism
also
broke
with
the
uniformity
projected
by
berdache.
Blackwood
created
new
contexts
for
debating
the
presumptions
naturalized
within
berdache.
Yet
her
work
remained
compatible
with
the
aim
of
a
new,
feminist
anthropological
authority
to
define
Indigenous,
gendered,
and
sexual
truth.
While
her
term
"female
cross-gender
roles"
displaced
the
focus
on
male
roles
and
was
less
totalizing
than
berdache,
its
purpose
remained
to
codify
Indigenous
sexual
and
gender
diversity
into
an
anthropological
object.
However
distinct
this
term
was
meant
to
be,
it
gained
broadest
discussion
in
texts
defined
by
homosexuality
and
berdache,
so
that
"female
crossgender
roles"
appeared
as
a
variation
on
efforts
to
define
Native
Americans
for
the
anthropology
of
homosexuality.

Walter
Williams
engaged
Blackwood
while
writing
his
book
The
Spirit
and
the
Flesh:
Sexual
Diversity
in
American
Indian
Culture
(1986),
although
he
endeavored
to
establish
berdache
as
a
key
term
in
the
anthropology
of
homosexuality.
Following
his
peers
in
defining
it
not
as
homosexuality
but
as

98
an
"alternative
gender
role,"
Williams
parted
from
feminist
critics
by
not
studying
the
term
within
gendered
power
relations,
and
instead
repeating
earlier
accounts
by
examining
a
male
role
that
permitted
discussion
of
female
embodiment
and
feminist
critique
only
secondarily.
Yet
this
dissonance
arose
from
an
even
deeper
problematic
in
Williams's
project,
as
the
first
to
move
past
rereading
older
texts
and
conduct
new
ethnography
of
Native
people.
Seeking
to
claim
that
the
roles
described
by
the
object
persisted
in
Native
societies
today,
Williams
assigned
the
term
"berdache"
to
any
male-bodied
Native
people
he
met
who
identified
or
were
identified
by
others
as
gay,
homosexual,
or
a
variety
of
traditional
terms-although,
he
found,
never
as
"berdaches."
His
use
of
the
term
reflected
its
ease
of
translation
and
importance
among
anthropologists,
but
it
also
indicates
that
Williams
met
Native
people
from
within
the
expectations
set
by
the
object.
For
instance,
his
concluding
appeal
to
feminist
analysis
makes
sense
if
the
object's
correlation
to
male
embodiment
made
it
seem
both
accurate
and
a
service
to
women
to
discuss
female
embodiment
separately.
Yet
any
exclusion
produced
by
the
term
followed
Williams's
anthropological
investment
in
finding
the
object
in
Native
people's
lives,
rather
than
asking
how
a
history
of
the
term
or
of
the
anthropological
project
it
incited
would
need
to
be
studied
and
displaced
for
Native
peoples'
lives
to
be
representable.

Ultimately,
however,
Williams
presents
his
anthropological
commitments
as
effects
of
a
deeper
commitment
to
create
knowledge
serving
sexual
minority
politics,
one
presumably-and
at
times
explicitly-non-Native.
Referencing
the
work
of
Judy
Grahn
and
Will
Roscoe,
he
notes
that
tales
of
berdache
historically
inspired
U.S.
sexual
minorities,
by
"[supplying]
a
sense
of
roots,
a
feeling
of
being
part
of
a
long
tradition
in
America."24
Yet,
in
doing
so,
berdache
promised
sexual
or
gender
liberation
only
inasmuch
as
it
first
liberated
non-Native
and
presumably
white
gays
and
lesbians
from
identifying
as
settlers
and
rewrote
their
lives
on
stolen
Native
land
as
somehow
being
a

99
return
to
kinship
with
their
own
kind.
Most
nonNative
gays
and
lesbians
in
the
1980s
knew
Native
gays
and
lesbians
only
from
the
pages
of
Williams's
book.
Their
kinship
existed
as
a
commodity,
its
spine
standing
out
on
a
bookshelf
at
home
or
in
a
lesbian
and
gay
bookstore,
if
not
as
a
story
widely
circulating
that
let
them
imagine
that
minoritized
sexuality
made
them
more
like
Native
people
than
the
settler
society
in
which
they
lived.
The
naturalized
settler
colonial
context
of
this
desire
let
Williams
exhort
his
U.S.
audience
to
let
berdache
lead
them
to

question
whether
a
separated
gay
subculture,
a
minority
lifestyle
built
around
same-sex
preferences,
is
more
preferable
to
integration
of
gender
variance
and
male-male
eroticism
into
the
general
family
structure
and
the
mainstream
society.
We
can
use
the
American
Indian
concept
of
spirituality
to
break
out
of
the
deviancy
model,
to
reunite
families,
and
to
offer
special
benefits
to
society
as
a
whole.
(275)

In
this
non-Native
application
of
anthropology
to
U.S.
sexual
politics,
Williams
turns
Native
America
into
a
cipher
for
achieving
homonationalist
belonging
by
white
settler
descendants
in
a
renewed
white
settler
society.
But
rather
than
representing
an
innovation
of
his
book,
Williams's
claim
evokes
an
earlier
ethnography
that
narrated
Indigenous
gender
and
sexuality
under
U.S.
colonial
rule
as
a
lesson
for
U.S.
society.
Like
Coming
of
Age
in
Samoa,
The
Spirit
and
the
Flesh
appears
to
exist
"inside"
Native
cultureuntil
its
conclusion
reveals
that
its
goal
all
along
was
to
address,
evaluate,
and
progressively
change
the
normatively
white
readership
of
a
white
settler
society.

The
success
of
Williams's
work
served
ARGOH's
effort
to
produce
groundbreaking
anthropology
in
clear
defense
of
sexual
minorities
and
their
politics.
In
1986,
subsequent
to
its
leadership
in
the
AAA
antidiscrimination
battle,
the
group
presented
the
first
ARGOH
Award
for
"Distinguished

100
Scholarship
on
a
Lesbian
or
Gay
Topic"
-later
renamed
the
Ruth
Benedict
Book
Prize-to
The
Spirit
and
the
Flesh.
ARGOH
described
the
book
as
a
work
that
"breaks
new
ground
in
gay
research
and
exemplifies
a
quality
of
research
which
will
open
the
way
for
the
publication
of
other
anthropological
works
on
lesbian
or
gay
topics.""s
Yet
the
meeting
announcing
this
award
also
became
a
site
for
reevaluating
the
group
that
granted
it.
Records
show
that
the
award
presentation
was
followed
by
a
discussion
initiated
by
women
members
on
"the
need
for
gender
parity
in
ARGOH
sponsored
sessions,
and
the
need
for
ARGOH
to
be
more
sensitive
to
lesbian
concerns."
As
newsletter
editor
Blackwood
explained,
this
discussion
led
(inevitably)
to
questions
about
ARGOH's
purpose:
whether
it
is
supposed
to
provide
support
for
research
on
gay
and
lesbian
topics
or
serve
as
an
association
for
lesbian
and
gay
anthropologists."
Following
a
proposal
that
ARGOH's
name
be
altered
"to
reflect
our
identity
as
gay
people,"
discussion
was
tabled
and
letters
addressing
these
themes
were
invited
for
the
newsletter.-6
During
subsequent
months,
member
letters
affirmed
that
the
group
had
a
history
of
marginalizing
women,
including
in
its
use
of
the
term
"homosexuality,"
while
its
name
obscured
its
commitments
to
sexual
minority
politics.
Echoing
a
suggestion
by
Sue-Ellen
Jacobs,
many
members
proposed
the
creation
of
an
interest
group
for
the
study
of
homosexuality
to
be
subsidiary
to
an
association
redefined
by
political
identity.
Here,
activist
lesbian
and
gay
scholars
seeking
minority
recognition
in
their
discipline
gained
support
from
colleagues
who
put
their
research
goals
second
to
new
activism.
Debate
resolved
in
1987
when
the
group
voted
to
rename
itself
the
Society
of
Lesbian
and
Gay
Anthropologists.
The
proposed
research
group
never
materialized;
but
by
being
absorbed
into
the
broader
work
of
SOLGA,
the
new
name
fulfilled
ARGOH's
purpose:
to
support
research
on
homosexuality
from
within
a
deeper
purpose
of
promoting
sexual
minorities
and
their
politics
within
anthropology
and
beyond.
Defining
a
group
by
its
leadership-lesbian
and
gay
anthropologists-held
anthropology

101
accountable
to
the
identities
and
politics
of
sexual
minorities,
while
feminist
critique
now
affirmed
that
lesbians
no
longer
would
be
peripheral
to
gay
men.

SOLGAs
admixture
of
scholarly
and
political
goals
gained
their
widest
public
recognition
in
1991
through
a
last
popularization
of
berdache
in
this
period,
Will
Roscoe's
monograph
The
Znni
Man-Woman.
Roscoe
came
to
the
anthropology
of
berdache
as
an
independent
scholar
whose
study
of
the
Zuni
lhamana
role
appeared
in
a
slide
show
he
presented
at
Zuni
Pueblo
and
elsewhere
titled
The
Zuni
Man-Woman:
A
Traditional
Gay
Role."
In
the
early
1980s,
he
invited
the
San
Francisco
group
Gay
American
Indians
to
collaborate
in
new
research
and
GAI
appointed
him
coordinator
of
its
History
Project,
which
led
to
the
anthology
Living
the
Spirit
and
publication
of
Roscoe's
bibliography
and
historical
accounts
of
berdache.
Roscoe's
later
transition
to
doctoral
study
and
SOLGA
participation
continued
his
effort
to
offer
gay
men
and
lesbians
a
history
through
cross-cultural
evidence
of
"gay
roles,"
whose
economic,
political,
and
religious
qualities
indexed
for
him
a
universal
"gay
pattern"
matching
gay
and
lesbian
desires.27
Roscoe
promoted
berdache
much
like
Carpenter
and
Mead
by
arguing
that
a
predictable
appearance
of
minoritized
sexuality
in
societies
worldwide
offered
a
tool
for
promoting
self-knowledge
for
gay
men
and
lesbians
and
social
tolerance.
Such
sentiments
define
his
writing
at
the
time,
although
he
focused
more
narrowly
on
Native
and
colonial
histories
in
The
Znni
ManWoman.
The
book
was
published
to
wide
acclaim,
including
recognition
by
the
AAA,
which
gave
it
the
1991
Margaret
Mead
Award
as
the
best
book
to
"interpret
anthropological
data
in
ways
meaningful
to
the
public."28
The
Mead
Award
acknowledged
the
book's
broad
popularity
in
sexual
minority
communities
as
well
as
Roscoe's
efforts
to
communicate
its
contents
to
the
Zuni
people.

Roscoe's
success
affirmed
SOLGAs
effort
to
renew
U.S.
anthropology's
progressive
profile
by
promoting
berdache
as
a
tool
of
social
change.
SOLGA

102
reprinted
the
comments
Roscoe
did
not
have
the
chance
to
read
aloud
on
receiving
the
award,
and
which
then
became
part
of
SOLGAs
legacy.29
He
opens
by
saying,

there
is
a
way
that
holding
this
award
now
completes
a
circle
that
begins
with
the
work
of
Margaret
Mead
and
her
teacher,
Ruth
Benedict.
They
also
wrote
about
Native
American
berdaches
and
drew
on
the
insights
they
gained
to
argue
for
grater
social
tolerance.
And
they
also
were
passionate
lovers
of
their
own
sex.
But
unlike
Benedict
and
Mead,
I
do
not
have
to
hide
this
part
of
my
life.
Even
so,
the
task
of
ensuring
that
anthropology
is
an
inclusive
profession
is
far
from
complete.

Roscoe
then
links
the
sexually
diverse
history
of
progressive
U.S.
anthropology
(in
which
berdache
already
played
a
part)
to
SOLGAs
current
challenge
to
disciplinary
homophobia
as
a
barrier
that,
we
now
see,
also
affected
Benedict
and
Mead.
Citing
SOLGAs
discussions
on
gaining
status
as
an
AAA
section,
Roscoe
notes
that
"many
institutions
of
higher
education
still
do
not
prohibit
discrimination
based
on
sexual
preference,"
such
that
"should
the
Society
of
Lesbian
and
Gay
Anthropologists
affiliate
with
the
Association,
it
might
be
the
only
unit
that
anthropologists
will
actually
have
to
risk
their
jobs
to
join."
He
quotes
Catherine
Bateson's
comment
on
Mead's
sexual
history,
to
the
point
that
Mead
"clearly
believed
that
the
keeping
of
these
secrets
was
...
a
precondition
to
her
availability
to
do
the
work
that
she
felt
was
important."30
The
era
of
AIDS
begs
for
an
anthropological
"spokesperson"
to
lead
critique
and
change,
he
says,
and
closes
by
asking,
"How
then
can
we
make
sure
that
...
individuals
with
the
talents
and
disposition
of
Mead
can
again
achieve
her
stature
and
prestige,
and
make
the
kind
of
social
contributions
that
she
was
able
to
make?"
With
the
moral
force
of
receiving
one
of
the
AAAs
highest
honors,
Roscoe
eloquently
models
the
activism
of
ARGOH/SOLGA
by
making
knowledge
of
sexual
diversity,
notably
berdache,
challenge
sexual

103
conservatism
as
an
expression
of
the
heart
of
the
discipline.
He
does
not
just
assert
that
sexual
minority
politics
and
good
anthropology
are
compatible,
but
argues
that,
in
view
of
the
legacy
of
a
figure
like
Mead,
they
appear
as
one.

SOLGA
did
not
uniformly
acclaim
Roscoe's
book.
In
a
review
in
the
SOLGA
newsletter,
Blackwood
noted
that
"it
is
clear
from
[Roscoe's]
analysis
that
he
thinks
of
berdache
as
male"
and
questioned
the
modern
gay
logics
she
perceived
in
his
descriptions
of
Zuni
life."
But
her
disagreement
regarding
what
Roscoe
said
about
berdache
ends
by
recalling
the
common
ground
shaping
why
they,
as
anthropologists,
debated
it:

I
am
willing
to
set
aside
these
problems,
because
Roscoe
gives
us
a
compelling
view
of
another
way
of
looking
at
humanity,
a
vision
of
an
alternate
construction
of
social
life,
which
may
help
to
liberate
our
own
warped
sense
of
who
we
are
as
"Western"
women
and
men.
(59)

This
sentiment
echoes
the
long-standing
work
of
ARGOH/SOLGA
members
to
narrate
sexual
and
gender
diversity
as
a
means
to
fulfill
their
own
lives.
It
repeats
progressive
anthropology's
civilizational
investment
in
separating
"Western"
and
settler
societies
from
the
Indigenous
cultures
that
edify
them.
In
each
case,
the
anthropology
of
berdache
makes
Native
culture
crucial
to
gender
and
sexual
liberation
because
it
transforms
U.S.
sexual
minorities'
relationship
to
the
history,
culture,
and
power
of
settler
colonialism.
Anthropological
conversations
popularized
berdache
as
an
Indigenous
and
sexual
truth
that
defined
normatively
non-Native
sexual
minority
subjects
and
politics
within
a
white
settler
society.

"Without
Sources,
without
Footnotes,
without
Doubt":
Counterculturist
Imaginings
of
Queer
Indigeneity

Prior
to
its
promotion
in
late-twentieth-century
anthropology,
gay
and
lesbian
counterculturists
invoked
berdache
to
liberate
queer
indigeneity.
In
the

104
1970s,
gay
and
lesbian
radicals
challenged
heteropatriarchal
capitalism,
racism,
and
imperialism
by
pursuing
back-to-the-land
rural
collectivism
and
primitivism,
which
gay
men
also
linked
to
recalling
berdache.
One
record
of
their
work
appears
in
RFD,
a
U.S.
reader-written
journal
by
and
for
rural
gay
men.
Beginning
in
1974,
rural
gay
men's
collectives
edited
RFD
to
portray
ideal
rural
and
Indigenous
routes
to
gay
liberation.
Contributors
cited
texts,
oral
narratives,
and
intuition
as
evidence
tracing
gay
nature
to
an
Indigenous
spiritual
root
modeled
by
berdache
that
reconciled
them
to
their
non-Native
and
normatively
white
inheritance
of
settlement.
While
a
key
group
that
arose
from
this
history,
the
Radical
Faeries,
will
be
discussed
later
in
this
book,
this
section
reads
RFD
as
a
record
of
prior
and
broader
counterculturist
conversations
that
popularized
berdache
as
Indigenous
grounds
for
liberating
non-Native
gay
men
on
settled
land.32

Gay
back-to-the-land
counterculturism
resembled
other
such
projects
by
creating
a
rural-urban
formation,
in
which
urban
expatriates
joined
rural-
raised
participants
on
rural
land
and
invited
visitors
to
participate
through
travel
and
information
exchange.
RFD
was
proposed
as
a
"country
journal
by
gay
men"
at
the
Midwest
Gay
Pride
Conference
in
1974,
where
"18
people
(gay
men)
who
are
into
a
gay
or
mixed
rural
collective
life
style"
living
near
Iowa
City
joined
to
produce
the
first
Over
time
the
editorship
shifted
among
rural
gay
collectives
in
Oregon,
western
North
Carolina,
central
Tennessee,
and
northern
New
The
journal
quickly
gathered
a
readership
similar
to
other
counterculturist
projects.
The
winter
issue
editors
at
Wolf
Creek
described
themselves
as
all
young
(if
those
of
us
in
our
thirties
can
be
considered
young),
white,
men.
Almost
all
of
us
grew
up
outside
of
the
large
cities.
But
all
of
us
have
been
nurtured
by
the
cultural/political
gay
male
circles
in
the
large
cities.
Though
some
of
us
come
from
the
working
class,
most
of
us
come
from
the
middle
class."35
In
1975,
the
journal's
first
survey
reported
276
readers,

105
nearly
three
out
of
four
being
gay-identified
urban
residents
of
Christian
religious
background
with
a
median
age
of
twenty-five.36
The
absence
of
race
as
a
factor
in
the
survey
reflected
the
normative
whiteness
of
the
collectives
and
the
journal's
readers.
Imagery
and
testimony
in
RFD
invoked
rural
white
gay
men
inheriting
a
settler
culture
while
seeking
Indigenous
ties
to
land.
The
journal
first
represented
"country"
within
gay
reimaginings
of
European
roots
and
settler
homesteading,
as
in
articles
on
building
cabins,
gardening,
and
cooking.37
Yet
these
nostalgic
images
appeared
within
a
counterculturist
spirituality
that
traced
gay
men's
nature
to
European
neo-pagan
knowledge.
Amid
references
to
pagan
holidays
and
celebrations,
some
contributors
argued
for
a
special
role
for
ancient
European
gay
men,
as
in
the
Wolf
Creek
collective's
opening
to
the
winter
1976
issue:

The
original
meaning
of
faggot
is
"a
bundle
of
twigs
or
sticks
used
as
kindling."
In
the
middle
ages
the
church
used
us
gay
men
as
kindling,
or
faggots,
to
burn
witches.
Witches
were
usually
wise
herbal
healers,
all
strong
women,
often
lesbians.
Witches
and
faggots
were
enemies
of
the
church
because
we
were
often
country
dwellers,
lovers
of
the
natural
world
and
the
communal
good,
rather
than
private
greed.
We
were
an
obstacle
to
the
development
of
merchantalism,
which
became
capitalism.
We
are
proud
of
our
past.
We
are
proud
of
being
identified
so
closely
with
strong
women
...
Though
all
of
us
are
not
sissy-men,
we
will
no
longer
be
ashamed
of
woman-identified
men
or
the
woman-identified
man
in
all
of
us.38

Proclaiming
politicized
effeminacy
and
feminism,
this
story
portrays
white
gay
men
and
feminist
women
as
antagonists
to
a
Euro-American,
capitalist,
and
Christian
settler
society
that
they
might
otherwise
appear
to
represent
but
that
their
politics
disavows
and
opposes.

106
 Correlations
between
a
European
past
and
Native
American
indigeneity
appeared
in
RFD
after
its
first
concerted
reflection
on
spirituality,
in
the
summer
of
1977
"Spirituality
Issue."
Having
invited
readers
to
describe
"faggot
spirituality"
in
"traditional
spirituality,
Native
religions,
personal
magic,
and
all
sorts
of
combinations,"
the
editors
arranged
from
submissions
an
eclectic
melange
in
which
a
uniquely
gay
nature
claimed
Native
roots.39
Contributor
Gary
Lee
Phillips
from
Lansing,
Michigan,
asserted
this
when
he
told
how
breaking
from
a
career
as
a
Catholic
priest
led
to
his
"present
state
of
spirituality,"
which
for
him
affirmed
that

there
is
a
special
magick
in
gayness.
It
has
been
recognized
in
most
human
cultures
at
one
time
or
another.
We
as
gay
people,
both
women
and
men,
have
provided
more
than
our
share
of
saints
and
martyrs,
priests
and
n u n s ,
witches
and
warlocks,
seers
and
prophets.
This
is
not
a
coincidence.40

A
gay
adaptation
of
European
religious
histories
to
a
global
spirituality
was
evoked
by
Jada
Joyous
of
San
Francisco,
who
combined
"feminism
and
sissy
consciousness,
socialism
and
anarchism,
pagan-gypsy/trippy-hippie
love-
power,
wholistic
health
and
meditation,
with
Catholicism
and
Judaism,
witchcraft
and
voodoo
thrown
in
for
spice."
But
joyous
grounded
these
ties
in
a
new
realization:

Adding
further
spice
to
the
brew
is
a
new
sense
of
gay
history,
connecting
us
to
centuries
of
earth
rituals
(and
persecutions)
of
faggot-witches.
We
have
always
been
religious
people,
and
have
been
in
positions
of
religious
honor
in
many
Native
cultures.41

In
1977,
joyous
and
Phillips
assign
newness
to
a
story
echoing
the
Iowa
City
collective
in
19
74,
although
here
pagan
Europe
marks
a
more
primordial
human
nature
recognizable
in
"Native
cultures."
A
grounding
of
gay

107
spirituality
in
Native
American
roots
also
appeared
in
narratives
invoking
the
"shaman,"
following
the
popularization
of
Carlos
Castaneda's
writing
on
psychotropics
as
Indigenous
conduits
to
spiritual
insight.42
The
term
spoke
to
Caradoc
from
Berkeley,
who
found
his
practice
as
a
priest
in
a
European
pagan
coven
situated
more
deeply:
"I
found
in
the
craft
a
way
of
sharing
my
magic
and
vision,
which
are
after
all
the
basic
function
and
obligation
of
a
shaman."43
The
issue
closed
by
affirming
this
notion
in
editor
jam's
summation:
"there's
a
great
shaman/sorcerer/wisewoman
inside
you,
more
*****
than
you
can
imagine,
the
key
is
your
gayness."44
Jam's
inclusion
of
"wisewoman"
after
(Native)
shaman
and
(European
pagan)
sorcerer
suggests
that
gay
spirituality
will
reflect
gendered
effeminacy
and
feminist
stakes,
although
these
represent
a
"key"
to
a
deeper
potential
marked
by
Native
spirituality.

Although
submissions
to
the
Spirituality
Issue
do
not
mention
berdache
by
name,
qualities
associated
with
the
object
appear
as
references
to
a
general
Indigenous
gay
nature
and
a
specific
Native
archetype
for
counterculturist
white
gay
men.
These
cohere
most
forecefully
in
drawings
by
Jamal
Redwing
that
are
published
in
the
issue
without
comment.
Their
absence
of
narrative
contextualization
suggests
their
legibility
to
RFD's
audience
as
aspects
of
a
mythos
that
white
gay
counterculturism
sought
to
create.
Redwing's
first
image,
"Faggot
Shaman
Poet
Butterfly
Dancer,"
most
directly
evokes
berdache
by
representing
a
gay
male
figure
embodying
Native
American
religious
life.
A
nude
male
in
an
effeminate
and
sexually
suggestive
pose
dances
in
a
butterfly
headdress
at
a
pueblo,
along
one
wall
of
which
three
similarly
attired
dancers
are
silhouetted.
The
dancers'
link
of
effeminacy
to
religious
shaman"-is
stylized
to
project
gay
counterculturist
desire,
as
"dancer"
and
"poet"
evoke
the
creative
life
Carpenter
imagined
for
gay
men,
while
"butterfly"
might
suggest
European
fairy
lore
as
much
as
gay
nature's
emergence.
Their
appearance
at
the
pueblo
suggests
a
living
spiritual

108
tradition,
but
one
troubled
by
the
absence
of
any
witnesses
or
participants
apart
from
themselves.
The
image
portrays
an
Indigenous
social
context
for
berdache
in
gay
counterculturist
claims,
even
as
the
appearance
of
that
context
only
as
static
signs
presents
faggot
shamans
as,
in
effect,
their
own
community.
Marshaling
Native
culture
as
a
cipher
for
minoritized
sexuality
omits
any
larger
Native
nation
in
which
the
dancers
live
or
gain
and
transmit
meaning.
The
only
part
of
Native
culture
lived
collectively
is
one
that
serves
white
gay
men
imagining
minoritized
Indigenous
roots:
Native
nationality
and
sovereignty
are
not
imagined,
or
even
desired,
in
this
appropriation.

Another
Redwing
image,
"Untitled,"
more
narrowly
narrates
gay
nature
by
conjoining
Indigenous
Europe
with
Native
America,
while
showing
how
such
imaginaries
mediated
white
gay
men's
inheritance
of
settler
colonialism.
Before
a
moon-illuminated
forest,
a
nude
and
aroused
Native
man
kneels
before
an
obelisk
on
which
sits
the
carved
head
of
the
European
neo-pagan
"horned
god,"
sometimes
imagined
as
Pan.
Protruding
at
waist
height
from
the
obelisk
is
an
erect
phallus,
on
which
the
Native
man's
eyes
are
transfixed;
he
thrusts
his
erect
penis
forward
in
homoerotic
homage
and
desire.
This
image
complexly
reverses
white
gay
counterculturist
discoveries
of
gay
nature
within
Native
culture.
The
Indigenous
man's
naked
enrapture
by
the
appearance
of
Pan
marks
his
existence
in
a
state
of
nature,
and
this
as
his
first
contact
with
nature's
(and
male
sexuality's)
European
god.
The
scene
reverses,
and
echoes,
colonial
representations
of
the
disembarkation
of
colonists
being
met
by
Indigenous
Americans
who
reverence
their
superiority
and
authority.
Yet,
by
representing
an
Indigenous
discovery
of
a
European
statue
on
redwood-
and
fir-studded
land,
the
image
establishes
a
global
and
transhistorical
purview
for
European
paganism,
of
which
Native
America
is
an
example.
That
this
man,
absent
any
effeminate
or
religious
trappings,
recognizes
the
object
of
his
submission
and
longing
homoerotically
suggests
that
berdache
is
not
the
only
bridge
for
white
gay
men
to
claim
a
link
to
Native
culture.
Here,
colonial

109
narratives
of
indiscriminate
sexuality
echo
with
a
twentieth-century
genre
of
homoerotic
cowboyIndian
and
captivity
narratives
to
project
sexual
freedom
into
the
authentic
Indigenous
man
whom
white
gay
men
desire.
But,
most
important,
the
fantasy
flips
counterculturist
white
gay
men's
discovery
of
their
nature
within
Native
culture
to
suggest
that
their
claim
performs
no
history
of
encroachment
or
appropriation.
In
this
image
of
original
communion,
white
gay
men
address
their
inheritance
of
settlement
by
finding
through
gay
nature
a
prior
belonging
to
Native
land,
where
histories
of
conquest
are
superseded
by
a
more
ancient
and
mutual
desire.

110
111
Jamal
Redwing.
"Faggot
Shaman
Poet
Butterfly
Dancer."
Reprinted
with
permission
of
RFD.

The
Spirituality
Issue's
quests
for
pagan
indigeneity
inspired
debate
in
later
issues
reflecting
divergent
reader
perspectives
on
gayness,
spirituality,
and
settlement.
Kelly
Lindner
of
Pioche,
Nevada,
wrote
that
he
remained
interested
in
RFD-especially,
he
said
wryly,
if
it
helped
him
meet
attractive
"gay
hippies"-but
he
had
a
"qualm"
about

your
spiritual
tone.
You
don't
need
to
devote
a
whole
issue
to
bring
to
the
surface
that
you're
all
cultivating
some
ethereal
home-brewed
bullshit.
I
don't
blame
you.
I
got
thoughts
of
my
own.
There's
no
need
to
go
chasing
after
some
crazy
organized
religion
but
there's
also
no
need
for
you
guys
t o
constantly
harp
on
your
paganistic
rituals
and
candle-burnings.
Witchcraft
ain't
my
trip
and
you
guys
seem
to
push
it
a
bit
too
far.
Keep
your
idealized
solipsism
a
bit
more
to
yourself!45

Bill
Holloway
of
Toronto
later
chastised
Lindner
for
dismissing
how
contributors
sought
a
"tribal
connection,"
the
absence
of
which
he
praised
RFD
for
trying
to
address
in
its
readers'
"modern"
and
"western"
lives:

We
have
had
no
community,
no
tribe.
Our
only
feelings
of
tribal
connection
have
been
through
the
family
and
through
the
abstract
modern
idolatries
...
All
of
western
society
is
in
this
state.
No
one
has
clear
methods
for
communicating
consciousness-raising
experience.
Your
work
in
this
area
is
extremely
valuable.46

In
kind,
Tom
Manes
of
Houston
communicated
his
happiness
that
RFD
affirmed
that
"just
as
there
are
alternatives
to
sexuality,
there
are
also
alternatives
in
spirituality."47
Manes
joined
Holloway
in
countering
Lindner's
skepticism
by
calling
on
gay
men
to
adapt
"tribal"
knowledges
as
"alternatives"

112
to
the
"modern"
cultures
in
the
big
cities
where
they
and
most
other
RFD
readers
lived.

The
very
thesis
of
back-to-the-land
movement
and
non-Native
desires
for
indigeneity
were
critiqued
two
issues
later
by
Arnold
J.
Cornbelt."
Although
the
pseudonymous
author
admitted
to
originating
on
the
West
Coast
and
to
having
read
RFD
since
1974,
he
lampoons
the
journal
in
a
crude
sketch
that
parodies
an
RFD
cover.
Under
the
title
"WHITE
WEST-COAST
GARABAGE"
[sic],
captions
such
as
"BUYING
LAND
IS
EASY
(IF
YOU'RE
RICH"
and
"CITIES
ARE
O.K.
Too"
bracket
a
man
and
woman
posed
as
a
hippie
'American
Gothic"
in
afield
before
their
geodesic
dome
house.
Near
them,
a
four-legged
creature
marked
"SAN-FRANCISCO
SCENE"
with
a
bee-hive
coifed
human
head
and
feet
in
high
heels
pleads
to
the
couple
to
"FEED
ME!"48
Cornbelt's
critique
of
class-privileged
expatriates
from
San
Francisco
claiming
rural
space
also
positions
RFD
close
to
the
heteronormative
roots
of
the
back-to-the-land
movement.
But
he
also
comments
on
Redwing's
images:

Issue
#12
has
showed
me
that
whites
can
be
Indians
too!
Although
whites
have
murdered,
raped,
destroyed,
starved,
and
cursed
the
Indian
peoples
to
the
ultimate,
pages
8,
18,
and
23
indicate
they
need
only
strip
off
their
clothes,
glue
on
a
few
chicken
feathers,
and
dance
around
naked
with
a
hard-on.
Ta
da!
Instant
Indian!
What
a
wonderful
world
it
is
when
ego-
maniacal
greedy
white
children
can
become
all
that
their
ancestors
murdered
in
an
instant.

Cornbelt's
words
prompted
editor
Candor
Smoothstone
to
thank
him
facetiously
for
a
"tacky"
letter.49
But
by
only
briefly
acknowledging
Cornbelt's
critique,
Smoothstone
glossed
over
the
only
direct
comment
on
Redwing's
images
to
appear
in
RFD.
On
setting
it
aside,
RFD
affirmed
that
it

113
would
present
but
leave
unexamined
white
gay
men's
efforts
to
portray
Native
culture
as
a
source
of
sexual
liberation
that
also
reconciled
them
to
settlement
by
gaining
belonging
to
Native
culture
and
land.

Narratives
in
RFD
tapped
into
conversations
on
gay
indigeneity
whose
most
widely
circulated
expression
appeared
in
Arthur
Evans's
Witchcraft
and
the
Gay
Counterculture.
Originally
published
serially
in
the
more
urban
gay
counterculturist
journal
Fag
Rag
(1975-76),
his
work
was
not
cited
directly
in
RFD's
Spirituality
Issue,
but,
during
these
years,
RFD
contributors,
including
Evans,
affirmed
their
shared
intuition
in
the
existence
of
an
Indigenous
gay
nature.
Evans
first
addressed
this
subject
in
1975
in
a
short
RFD
article
that
announced
his
departure
from
graduate
school
to
look
for
land
in
the
country
and
to
begin
a
revolutionary
new
lifestyle."
He
reports:

I
had
fallen
back
into
the
habit
of
scholarly
reading
...
In
the
process,
I
h a d
come
across
a
lot
of
provocative
material
in
history
and
anthropology
having
to
do
with
Gay
people.
Much
of
this
stuff
deals
with
the
people
called
"witches"
in
the
Middle
Ages.
I
was
excited
by
these

Framing
the
material
in
these
texts
as
"discoveries"
thematically
references
gay
liberation
efforts
to
break
homophobic
silences
to
liberate
truths
and
grant
gayness
a
history.
In
the
process,
Evans
regards
these
texts
as
repositories
of
facts
rather
than
as
an
earlier
era's
interested
readings,
particularly
when
he
cites
ethnological
or
emancipationist
texts
to
justify
his
desires
for
Indigenous
gay
nature.

In
his
book,
Evans
argues
first
that
"nature
people"-his
euphemism
for
primitive
or
premodern-promise
gay
people
liberation
in
their
"sharp
distinction
to
the
Christian
/industrial
tradition:
their
love
of
sexuality":"

The
Indians
who
have
been
observed
in
the
Americas;
the
myths
that

114
 have
survived
in
Europe;
the
artifacts
that
exist
from
all
over
the
world-all
attest
to
the
pleasure
of
what
the
celebrants
were
doing
...
Gay
people
of
both
sexes
were
looked
upon
with
religious
awe,
and
sexual
acts
of
every
possible
kind
were
associated
with
the
most
holy
forms
of
religious
expression.
(109,
111)

This
account
hinges
on
Evans's
most
famous
example,"
berdache,
as
a
model
of
"gay
shamans"
in
ancient
religions
worldwide
(101,
106).
He
invites
embracing
these
histories
as
part
of
a
"new
socialism"
in
which
modern
subjects
become
the
Indigenous
people
who
inspire
them,
such
that
"a
myriad
number
of
autonomous
tribes,
small
in
population,
growing
like
plants
from
the
earth"
will
"[replace]
industrial
technology
with
people's
technology"
(154,
146).
But
amid
entrenched
"industrial
patriarchy,"
such
efforts
will
be
"short-
lived"
unless
people
"tap
into
...
the
spiritual
powers
in
nature
and
in
ourselves"
(148).
Revolution
will
reinvigorate
natural
sexuality
once
gay
people
claim
roles
that
demand
to
be
reborn:

If
we
are
ever
to
rise
up
from
the
dead
and
regain
our
rightful
place
in
nature
...
we
will
have
to
summon
forth
powers
that
have
not
been
known
since
the
days
of
the
shamans
...
Let
us
invoke
our
friends,
the
banished
and
forbidden
spirits
of
nature
and
self,
as
well
as
the
ghost
of
Indian,
wise-woman,
faggot,
Black
sorcerer,
and
witch.
They
will
hear
our
deepest
call
and
come.
Through
us
the
spirits
will
speak...
We
look
forward
to
regaining
our
ancient
historical
roles
as
medicine
people,
healers,
prophets,
shamans,
and
sorcerers.
(133,149,154-55)

Evans
argues
that
revolution
will
follow
once
white
gay
men
are
possessed
by
the
spirits
of
"nature
people,"
including
the
ghosts
of
Indians,
or
reincarnate
those
spirits
as
their
own
selves.
White
settler
gay
men
here
appropriate
the
ancestors
of
racial
and
national
Others
as
their
own
subjectivities
to
justify
or

115
inspire
revolutionary
anticolonialism
and
sexual
liberation.

Witchcraft
and
the
Gay
Colintercnltnre
was
well
received
by
its
core
audience,
but
I
am
interested
in
how
it
resonates
with
stories
that
already
circulated
among
gay
counterculturists.
In
a
contributor
to
RFD
named
Carl
showed
how
counterculturist
claims
derived
not
from
singular
sources
but
from
intuitive
inspiration
by
the
origins
they
sought.
Carl
wrote
that
reading
Evans's
earliest
serials
in
Fag
Rag
put
words
to
a
truth
he
had
been
waiting
to
recall.
In
a
moment
of
studying
medieval
European
dances,
Carl's
imagination
was
caught
by
seeing
his
sexuality
reflected
in
the
past:

I
notice
the
picture,
a
ring
of
fairies
dancing
in
a
circle.
A
few
weeks
later
I
am
scribbling
furiously
delving
into
figures
that
I
have
danced
for
15
years
now:
circles,
reels,
crosses.
I
am
creating
a
mock-ethnology
of
Celtic
dances.
Surely
these
wonderful
dances
must
have
had
their
origin
in
some
pre-Christian
era.
Without
sources,
without
footnotes,
without
doubt
I
realize
that
the
figures
are
celebrations
of
how
ancient
people
loved
each
other.
Sex
is
one
kind
of
celebration
of
that,
dance
is
another.52

Carl
invokes
Evans's
historical
and
ethnological
writing
as
conduits
for
his
own
intuition,
as
his
"mock-ethnology"
presents
nothing
so
systematic
while
still
evoking
scientific
authority.
Indeed,
the
fact
that
Carl
knows
his
ethnology
to
be
mimetic
does
not
reduce
its
utility:
"I
don't
much
care
if
it
really
happened,
this
culture
he
describes;
I
care
only
that
what
Arthur
read
has
helped
him
to
envision
a
better
scheme
of
things"
(31).
The
quests
by
Carl
and
Evans
for
sexual
liberation
by
imagining
indigeneity
gain
meaning
by
confirming
what
they
already
knew,
or
wished
to
know,
about
human
nature.
But
rather
than
critique
their
manner
of
writing
history,
I
wish
to
emphasize
that
claims
by
Evans,
Carl,
and
contributors
to
RFD
generated
their
personal,
even
spiritual,
realizations
in
conversations-whether
with
one
another,
with
real
or
imagined

116
citations,
or
with
the
intuitions
that
these
incite.
Indeed,
their
conversations
on
Indigenous
gay
nature
finally
cite
themselves
as
proof
for
their
claims.

In
a
1977
issue
of
RFD,
Gary
Phillips
reflects
on
stories
he
heard
that
inform
his
gay
identity:

I
make
no
pretense
to
being
an
anthropologist,
but
it
seems
to
me
that
I
recall
being
told
that
in
many
cultures
the
gay
person
is
revered
as
witchsacred.
Folk
knowledge
often
proves
true,
and
I
suspect
that
this
is
one
of
its

By
arguing
that
folk
knowledge
has
proven
true,
white
gay
men-citing
counterculturist
thought
and
affirming
it
in
conversation-assert
that
an
Indigenous
gay
nature
comprises
their
sexual
and
spiritual
heritage.
In
the
early
pages
of
RFD,
a
passage
from
European
paganism
to
a
global
and
transhistorical
indigeneity
answered
white
gay
men's
settler
colonial
inheritance
by
making
them
more
like
Indigenous
people
than
the
settlers
they
otherwise
represent.
Making
indigeneity
their
truth
performed
settler
modernity
by
incorporating,
embodying,
and
yet
transcending
indigeneity
when
asserting
their
belonging
on
stolen
land.
In
RFD
and
among
its
readers,
such
realizations
arose
in
conversations
on
an
ancient
and
spiritual
Indigenous
gay
nature,
inspired
by
and
inspiring
of
the
object
berdache.

Early
issues
of
RFD
presage
and
conditioned
later
conversations
on
berdache,
as
we
will
see
in
chapter
4,
which
discusses
how
gay
back-tothe-land
counterculturists
were
a
historical
backdrop
to
formation
of
the
Radical
Faeries.
In
1979,
prominent
Los
Angeles
gay
activists
decided
to
promote
insights
of
gay
counterculturism
more
broadly
and,
as
organizer
Harry
Hay
put
it,
"share
our
gay
vision"
while
developing
berdache
and
other
stories
of
queer
indigeneity
as
"a
resource
for
gay
spirituality."54
Their
work
intersected
other
work
on
berdache,
notably
Hay,
who
as
a
collector
of
berdache

117
literature
consulted
with
Williams
and
Roscoe
during
their
Roscoe
in
particular
engaged
gay
counterculturist
theses
on
berdache,
and
his
early
research
was
inspired
by
his
attending
Radical
Faerie
gatherings.56
Roscoe's
writing
for
anthropologists
and
Native
communities
was
complemented
by
texts
on
gay
spirituality.
He
describes
how
an
"archetypal
basis
for
gay
personality"
can
be
found
in
stories
of
berdache,
which
let
gay
men
"transform"
themselves
from
the
strictures
of
a
twogender
system
by
learning
the
liberating
place
of
"third-gender
roles."57
While
critical
of
judgments
meted
out
on
those
who
inspired
him-Judy
Grahn,
Mark
Thompson,
Arthur
Evans,
Harry
Hay,
and
others-"for
what
appears
to
be
the
crime
of
seeking
truth
outside
of
scholarly
discourse,"
Roscoe
defended
his
work
to
"make
a
history"
for
gay
men
and
lesbians
by
engaging
knowledge
that
he
took
"back
from
fairy
gatherings
to
later
reexamine,
follow-up,
substantiate,
research,
and
test."58
He
says
of
those
encounters:

Listening
to
the
stories
that
gay
men
have
to
tell-and,
we
discovered,
we
all
have
remarkable
stories
to
tell-it
really
became
clear
to
me
in
the
most
definite
way
how
much
more
is
involved
in
being
gay
than
simply
having
a
homosexual
orientation
...
Examining
our
lives
as
gay
adults,
we
found
more
common
ground
in
the
special
roles
we
often
fulfill
in
interpersonal
relationships,
work,
and
families.
The
multidimensional
model
...
really
grew
out
of
these
dialogues
with
gay
men,
which
have
been
going
on
at
fairy
gatherings
for
over
ten
years
now.
(245)

The
significance
of
this
account
is
not
that
Roscoe's
writing
on
berdache
was
inspired
by
the
Radical
Faeries-a
fact
that
he
widely
noted-but
rather
the
process
by
which
his
work
and
that
of
other
white
gay
counterculturists
came
to
be
linked.
Here,
Roscoe
frames
conversations
with
gay
men
at
Radical
Faerie
gatherings
as
sites
of
knowledge
production,
where
ideas
learned
elsewhere
were
brought
for
consideration
before
returning
to
broader

118
debate.
This
recursive
quality
in
Radical
Faerie
practice
informed
broader
queer
culture,
politics,
and
knowledge
with
insights
generated
in
gay
counterculturist
space.
Roscoe
also
shows
that
the
thinking
space
created
by
Radical
Faeries
was
collective
in
that
it
invited
each
participant's
historical
or
intuitive
insights
to
spark
those
of
others.
Radical
Faeries
thus
produced
subjectivity
similarly
to
the
way
earlier
gay
counterculturists
did,
and
just
as
they
in
turn
recalled
earlier
colonial,
ethnological,
and
emancipationist
tales
of
berdache.
Gay
counterculturist
histories
demonstrate
how
conversations
on
berdache
and
queer
modernity
are
synchronic
and
diachronic.
New
insights
refer
to
earlier
claims
of
which
they
may
or
may
not
be
aware
but
that
they
maintain
and
transform.
Framing
counterculturist
conversations
in
this
way
also
reveals
that
the
boundary
between
academic
and
popular
cultures
is
porous,
if
not
a
fiction
that
obscures
how
each
produces
knowledge
for
the
other-indeed,
as
both
at
once.
Finally,
gay
counterculturist
histories
suggest
that
if
scholars
saw
a
consonance
between
berdache
and
gay
identity,
their
work
followed
white
gay
counterculturists
who
already
saw
in
berdache
a
reflection
of
desires
for
an
Indigenous
gay
nature.
Apart
from
any
citations,
their
intuitive
and
conversational
affirmations
mobilized
berdache
in
sexual
minority
cultural
politics.
I
agree
with
Roscoe
that
because
of
their
commitments,
RFD
and
the
Radical
Faeries
remain
vulnerable
to
ridicule
by
outsiders,
and
I
engage
their
work
seriously
as
a
site
where
non-Native
queer
modernities
reconcile
to
inheriting
settlement.
But
while
a
sense
of
being
on
the
fringe
was
important
to
gay
counterculturists,
I
contend
that
they
were
never
separate
from
non-Native
queer
modernities;
indeed,
they
formed
crucial
sites
for
popularizing
berdache
as
a
resource
for
all
queer
non-Natives.

Native
Negotiations:
Displacing
Berdache
in
Two-Spirit
Organizing

By
the
1990s,
non-Native
queer
popularizations
of
berdache
changed
in
response
to
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activism.
Native
queer
people
in
the

119
United
States
and
Canada
represented
Native
histories
and
their
lives
in
counterpoint
to
berdache,
and
instead
proposed
Two-Spirit
identity.
This
section
examines
how,
prior
to
Two-Spirit's
emergence
and
in
its
wake,
Native
activists
defined
gender
and
sexuality
discrepantly
from
non-Native
queer
modernities.
Rather
than
a
global
and
transhistorical
nature
reflected
in
berdache,
Native
activists
embraced
gender
and
sexual
identities
that
critiqued
settler
colonialism
and
narrated
Native
culture
for
Native
audiences
whose
solidarity
transformed
broader
queer
and
Native
politics.
They
engaged
and
fractured
the
colonial
logics
of
non-Native
conversations
in
anthropology
and
counterculturism
and
enacted
a
new
Native
politics
within
Two-Spirit
identity.

Beginning
in
the
1970s,
Native
gay,
lesbian,
bisexual,
and
transgender
people
met
in
new
networks
formed
in
the
wake
of
migration
to
cities
that
supported
both
urban
Native
and
radical
gender/sexual
politics.
While
offering
mutual
support,
they
also
asserted
their
belonging
in
Native
and
queer
politics
and
in
the
histories
of
Native
societies.
Alongside
Gay
American
Indians
in
the
United
States,
groups
that
arose
in
the
1980s
included
American
Indian
Gays
and
Lesbians
(AIGL)
in
Minneapolis,
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
in
New
York
City,
and
Nichiwakan
in
Winnipeg;
in
the
late
Vancouver
already
hosted
the
Native
Cultural
Society,
which
brought
Native
people
together
in
an
annual
drag
ball
and
other
activities.
GAI
also
promoted
Native
queer
people
in
the
media
and
in
Native
and
queer
communities.
GAI
members
set
up
booths
at
powwows
and
other
Native
community
events
(at
times
in
the
face
of
harassment);
published
testimonies
in
Native
media;
and
directed
Native
health
programs
to
address
their
experiences
of
AIDS.S9
GAI
also
sought
to
educate
civic
agencies
and
the
broader
gay
and
lesbian
movement
about
their
existence
and
their
claim
of
a
historical
place
in
Native
nations.60
According
to
Randy
Burns
and
Erna
Pahe,
GAI's
visibility
persuaded
skeptical
urban
Indian
organizations
to
later

120
seek
GAI
out
owing
to
its
ties
to
media,
government,
and
social
move
Native
queer
activists
increasingly
kept
in
touch
across
great
distances
and
periodically
gathered
at
Native
or
queer
activist
events.

The
identities
promoted
among
early
activists
are
reflected
in
Living
the
Spirit,
which
responded
to
burgeoning
anthropological
and
counterculturist
accounts
of
Native
history
as
a
first
text
not
just
about...
but
by
gay
Indians."62
In
1984,
while
anthropologists
were
conducting
research
on
berdache,
GAI
formed
its
History
Project
to
collect
information
on
our
history
and
to
make
it
available
to
the
larger
community."
GAI
announced
the
planned
anthology
in
a
198
7
ARGOH
newsletter
and
invited
ARGOH's
help
in
securing
a
publisher.63
Living
the
Spirit
juxtaposes
testimony,
poetry,
and
interviews
narrating
Native
activism
with
historical
writing
on
berdache
by
Native
writers.
A
reprint
of
"Tinselled
Bucks,"
the
article
by
Maurice
Kenney
(Mohawk),
joined
a
feminist
materialist
essay
by
Midnight
Sun
(Anishinaabe)
on
historical
roles
in
social
context.64
Kenney
in
1975
used
berdache
to
name
a
role
defined
by
male
embodiment
and
homosexuality,
whereas
Midnight
Sun
in
the
1980s
cites
feminist
scholars
to
circumvent
the
object
and
discuss
female
embodiment
while
questioning
the
centrality
of
homosexuality.
Yet
both
reject
a
transhistorical
object
by
emphasizing
variability
among
Native
societies,
which
Kenney
addresses
to
Native
readers
to
inspire
them
to
transform
Native
nations
today
and
accept
gender
and
sexual
diversity.65
Burns
describes
the
significance
of
Living
the
Spirit
in
teaching
Native
queer
people
their
"unique
heritage
as
American
Indians"
while
asserting
that
they
come
from
many
different
tribes"
with
"mutual
respect
for
individual
tribal
customs
and
traditions."66
Clyde
Hall
affirms
this
view
and
invites
Native
people
to
link
traditions
to
everyday
life
by
reimagining
Native
culture:

Traditions
need
to
be
researched
and
revived.
If
traditions
have
been
lost,
then
new
ones
should
be
borrowed
from
other
tribes
to
create

121
 groups
or
societies
for
gay
Indians
that
would
function
in
the
present.
An
example
of
this
is
the
contemporary
pow-wow
that
takes
elements
from
many
tribal
groups
and
combines
them
into
an
exercise
in
modern
Indian
tradition
and
social
structure
...
somehow,
there
should
be
a
blending
of
the
old
with
the
new.67

In
contrast
to
his
experience
of
being
raised
on
his
people's
land
and
taught
traditions
from
a
young
age,
Hall
here
also
envisions
identities
for
Native
people
with
no
tie
to
landed
culture
or
tradition.
Burns
links
all
of
these
varied
claims
within
a
politics
in
which
Native
GLBTQ
people
claiming
historical
traditions
as
their
"continuity"
also
organize
to
critique
the
effects
of
settler
colonialism,
in
"poverty,
poor
education,
and
unemployment,"
racism
in
queer
communities,
and
homophobia
in
Native
communities.68

Contributors
to
Living
the
Spirit
defined
their
lives
and
ties
to
Native
tradition
and
colonial
power
in
ways
that
contrasted
with
non-Native
projections
onto
them
of
a
primordial
sexual
nature.
Yet
this
very
distinction
emerged
as
Native
people
engaged
non-Native
claims
in
conversation.
We
saw
earlier
that
GAI
highlighted
its
broad
public
profile
by
citing
Judy
Grahn's
desire
to
romanticize
GAI's
activism
as
reflecting
a
primordial
queer
indigeneity.
I
argued
that,
rather
than
sharing
Grahn's
romanticism,
GAI
demonstrated
a
creative
ability
to
adapt
non-Native
colonial
desires
to
its
own
ends.
Living
the
Spirit
was
assembled
by
GAI
with
the
assistance
of
Will
Roscoe,
who
approached
GAI
at
the
1984
San
Francisco
Gay
Pride
festival
with
a
proposal
to
collaborate
that
resulted
in
his
being
invited
to
edit
the
History
Project's
Roscoe's
writing
for
Native
people
focused
on
historical
sources
and
on
defending
the
integrity
of
Native
cultures,
while
his
extrapolations
of
a
non-Native
queer
spirituality
appeared
in
writing
targeting
interested
non-Natives.
These
distinct
projects
surface
in
Living
the
Spirit
when
Roscoe's
interpretation
of
Native
activists
incites
them
to
speak
in

122
distinct
voices.

For
instance,
in
a
1985
interview
with
Erna
Pahe
in
Living
the
Spirit,
Roscoe
solicits
Pahe's
life
history
with
questions
about
her
growing-up
experiences
and
urban
activism.
He
asks,
"Do
you
see
connections
between
what
gay
Indians
do
today
and
the
traditional
roles
they
may
have
had
in
the
At
the
time,
Roscoe
was
studying
We'wha
as
a
historical
subject,
but
his
interest
in
the
lhamana
as
an
interrupted
past
posed
a
break
between
gay
Indian
identities
and
"traditional
roles."
Pahe's
response
does
not
conform
to
his
question
but
sets
a
distinctive
trajectory.
She
first
contrasts
the
"vocal"
lives
of
Native
people
in
GAI's
generation
to
those
of
the
gay
people
that
are
fifty
or
sixty
years
old
now."
She
describes
them
as
having
lived
lives
in
Native
communities
that
were
consistent
with
their
sense
of
self,
and
were
recognized
as
such
by
others,
as
when
one
would

just
go
in
and
start
the
fire
and
grind
the
corn
and
sit
next
to
the
women
and
laugh
and
joke
...
The
women
encouraged
that
input
from
the
males,
because
they
could
see
that
they
tried
so
hard.
But
they
didn't
have
to
say
anything
about
it.
They
didn't
ask
questions
and
that
person
or
individual
didn't
try
to
make
their
stand
known.
It
was
done
very
quietly.

Her
response
to
his
question
about
a
traditional
"past"
repositions
tradition
in
the
generation
immediately
prior
to
hers,
among
people
she
knows
who
faced
historical
constrictions
of
their
lives.
But
she
says
that
they
remained
sure
of
a
distinct
sense
of
self-indeed,
choosing
to
act
it
and
play
it
to
the
hilt"-only
with
the
support
of
comrades
in
contexts
that
prevented
public
"[speech]
about
what
you
were."
Pahe
thus
does
not
describe
queer
Natives
in
any
part
of
the
twentieth
century
as
posttraditional
subjects
who
struggle
to
reach
across
modernity's
break
with
Indigenous
authenticity
to
feel
"connections"
to
Native
culture
(110-11).
Instead,
for
her,
connections
were
never
broken,

123
because
Native
culture
exists
in
the
collective
practices
of
survival
and
resistance
that
she
describes.
The
only
difference
she
acknowledges
is
a
changed
political
reality:
she
and
GAI
can
now
proclaim
what
was
earlier
kept
quiet.
Against
romantic
appeals
to
tradition
by
non-Native
queers,
Pahe
portrays
queer
Native
life
by
displacing
a
tradition/modernity
split,
and
in
its
place
telling
a
story
of
Native
resistance
to
colonial
power
as
continuity
between
past
and
present.
Pahe's
words
stand
alongside
those
of
Burns,
Kenney,
and
Hall
to
frame
Native
writers
in
Living
the
Spirit
not
as
icons
of
gay
nature
but
as
historical
actors
seeking
a
place
within
contemporary
Native
communities
while
holding
non-Natives
answerable
to
challenge
the
settler
colonial
power
relations
Native
people
still
fight.
Yet,
the
major
insight
I
take
from
such
narratives
is
their
creative
response
to
non-Native
queer
desires
in
conversation.
GAI
adapted
the
interests
of
interlocutors
such
as
Grahn
and
Roscoe
to
announce
the
contrasting
epistemologies
and
politics
of
Native
queer
activists,
which
defined
their
lives
on
terms
that
non-Natives
were
not
invited
to
follow.

By
the
end
of
the
1980s,
Native
queer
activists
stepped
up
critique
of
anthropological
and
counterculturist
popularizations
of
berdache.
Native
activists
called
berdache
an
erroneous
colonial
term
that
represented
Native
peoples
in
primordial
and
generalizing
terms,
while
projecting
masculinism
and
sexualization
onto
them.
Such
deliberations
took
place
at
a
gathering
of
Native
queer
people
sponsored
by
American
Indian
Gays
and
Lesbians
in
Minneapolis
in
1988,
which,
in
partnership
with
comrades
in
Canada,
became
an
annual
International
Gathering
of
American
Indian
and
First
Nations
Gays
and
Lesbians.
At
the
1990
gathering
in
Winnipeg,
participants
focused
on
finding
a
new
term
for
Native
sexualities
and
gender
diversity."71
They
decided
to
name
their
ties
as
Native
queer
people
to
Native
national
traditions
and
to
one
another
with
the
term
"Two-Spirit,"
which
quickly
spread
as
a
new
term
to
describe
Native
queer
identities,
communities,
and
activism.

124
 Two-Spirit
proposed
to
link
traditions
named
in
Native
languages
with
the
lives
of
Native
GLBTQ
people
today.
As
a
calque
of
a
term
from
"Northern
Algonquin
...
niizh
nianitoag
(Two-Spirits),"
which
participants
at
the
Winnipeg
gathering
defined
as
the
presence
of
both
a
masculine
and
a
feminine
spirit
in
one
person,"
Two-Spirit
in
English
referred
at
once
to
"gay,
lesbian,
transvestite,
transsexual,
transgender,
drag
queens,
and
butches,
as
well
as
winkte,
nridleeh,
and
other
appropriate
tribal
terms."72
Two-Spirit
enabled
Native
people
to
draw
national
traditions
into
transnational
ties
even
as
it
affirmed
gender
and
sexual
diversity
by
rejecting
the
masculinism
in
berdache-which,
according
to
Beverly
Little
Thunder
(Standing
Rock
Lakota),
was
"meant
to
describe
males,
not
me."73
Some
invoked
TwoSpirit
to
resolve
a
separation
from
tribal
identity,
language,
or
society
caused
by
racism
and
assimilation,
as
when
Michael
Red
Earth
(Sisseton
Dakota)
and
Alex
Wilson
(Cree)
recall
how
Two-Spirit
identity
helped
them
link
childhood
and
adult
life
experiences,
reconcile
to
their
natal
communities,
and
investigate
how
they
might
articulate
their
lives
with
their
peoples'
national
traditions.74
Persons
affirmed
by
their
communities
within
a
traditional
gendered,
sexual,
or
spiritual
role
could
claim
Two-Spirit
identity,
although
Wesley
Thomas
(Navajo)
noted
that
in
the
Navajo
nation,
nddleehi
would
be
unlikely
to
do
so
owing
to
Two-Spirit's
negative
translation
in
Dine
language
as
well
as
the
primacy
of
their
traditional
identity
in
national
context.75
But
Native
queer
activists
did
not
argue
that
Two-Spirit
be
translated
into
Native
languages,
given
that
its
English
usage
was
to
affirm
distinctive
national
traditions
in
new
relationship.
Two-Spirit
thereby
interrupted
berdache
and
all
generalizations
of
Native
culture
by
facilitating
identification
that
affirmed
differences
and
fostered
alliances.
Even
if
Two-Spirit
were
applied
in
a
generalizing
fashion,
this
quality
did
not
inhere
in
the
term
and
remained
opposed
to
its
original
purpose
and
use:
Two-Spirit
announced
a
Native
identity
that
refused
to
be
identical
to
or
to
be
absorbed
by
berdache
or
any

125
other
gender
or
sexual
identity
defined
on
non-Native
terms.

Two-Spirit
identity
rapidly
reframed
Native
queer
activism
while
deepening
its
interventions
in
Native
and
non-Native
politics.
Many
Native
queer
organizations
adopted
the
term,
as
in
the
work
of
WeWah
and
BarChee-
Ampe
and
the
Toronto
organization
Gays
and
Lesbians
of
the
First
Nations,
which
soon
took
the
name
2-Spirited
People
of
the
1st
Nations,
and
later
2-
Spirits.76
The
renamed
annual
International
Two-Spirit
Gathering
also
inspired
many
to
join
or
form
Two-Spirit
groups
where
they
lived.
Some
promoted
Two-Spirit
identity
as
a
contribution
to
broader
Native
activism.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe's
close
ties
to
the
NewYork
City
American
Indian
Community
House
made
Two-Spirit
identity
part
of
urban
Indian
political
discourse,
including
in
activism
leading
to
the
1992
quincentennial
(discussed
in
chapter
3).
In
turn,
Native
queer
people
involved
in
Native
health
services
related
Two-Spirit
histories
to
Native
health,
notably
in
HIV/AIDS
organizing
(discussed
in
chapter
6).
All
such
projects
were
informed
by
the
gendering
of
Two-Spirit,
as
Native
lesbian
and
bisexual
women
and
trans
people
joined
Native
gay
and
bisexual
men
in
critiquing
the
masculinism
of
berdache
and
asserting
Two-Spirit
as
an
alliance-based
term
for
them
all.
Native
queer
activists
also
distinguished
Two-Spirit
from
berdache
by
joining
academic
allies
to
critique
anthropology.
Native
and
non-Native
anthropologists
who
sought
to
shift
scholarship
on
berdache
joined
Native
activists
in
two
conferences
in
1993
and
1994,
the
proceedings
of
which
were
published
in
Sue-Ellen
Jacobs,
Wesley
Thomas,
and
Sabine
Lang's
anthology
Two-Spirit
People:
Native
American
Gender
Identity,
Sexuality,
and
Spirituality
(1997).
Although
this
book
is
noteworthy
for
recording
a
moment
when
anthropologists
critiqued
berdache
in
dialogue
with
Two-Spirit
people,
less
well
recognized
(although
the
book
recounts
it)
is
the
fact
that
the
book
records
how
Native
activists
questioned
colonial
knowledge
production
by
presenting
Two-Spirit
as
an
Indigenous
epistemology
that
methodologically

126
performs
decolonization.

In
the
early
1990s,
Jacobs
and
Thomas
met
Lang,
a
German
scholar
sponsored
by
Walter
Williams
to
conduct
ethnography
on
berdache.
In
their
work,
including
Thomas
and
Lang's
visits
to
the
Navajo
nation
and
the
International
Two-Spirit
Gathering,
they
affirmed
a
shared
discomfort
with
anthropology's
historical
focus
on
the
category
berdache
and
"agreed
with
Two-Spirit
friends
that
for
too
long
discussions
of
Native
American
gender
diversity
and
sexuality
had
taken
place
without
benefit
of
shared
discourse
with
Native
Americans.""
Thomas
and
Jacobs
further
noted
that
Native
people
were
demanding
that
anthropologists
recognize
berdache
as
"insulting
and
part
of
the
colonial
discourse
that
continued
to
be
used
by
select
scholars
who
appropriate
Indigenous
people's
lives,"
and
that
"Native
people
were
talking
about
this
issue
long
before
non-Native
academics
noticed."71
Jacobs
further
expressed
her
concern,

if
the
recent
non-Native
interest
in
Native
American
sexuality
and
gender
diversity
was
a
phantasmagoric
adventure
of
white
homosexual
males
...
who
were
either
appropriating
cultural
elements
from
Native
cultures
(in
a
"new
age"
epistemological
fashion)
or
imputing
to
Native
cultures
characteristics
that
would
resolve
their
heartfelt
desires
to
be
recognized
fully
as
productive
and
important
members
of
their
own

The
three
scholars
decided
to
ask
anthropologists
of
berdache
and
TwoSpirit
activists
if
they
wished
to
meet
during
the
1992
AAA
meetings
in
San
Francisco
to
plan
collaborative
work.
As
soon
as
this
idea
was
suggested,
Gay
American
Indians
and
other
Two-Spirit
organizers
took
ownership.
Jacobs
reported
that
"GAI
sent
out
a
dinner
invitation
to
all
Native
American
anthropologists
and
non-Native
anthropologists
and
others
who
had
written
about
Native
Americans
(especially
about
the
`berdache')
and
who
planned
to

127
attend
the
AAA
meeting."
GAI
then
brought
a
large
contingent
of
local
and
visiting
Native
people
to
the
meeting,
where
the
non-Native
anthropologists
were
interrogated
about
their
motives,
interests,
experiences,
and
ambitions
in
investigating
Native
American
gender
diversity
and
sexuality."80
The
meeting
highlighted
Native
peoples'
discomfort
with
use
of
berdache,
including
to
describe
their
lives
today.
Encouraged
by
GAI,
the
anthropologists
gained
funds
from
the
Wenner-Gren
Foundation
for
a
preconference
and
panel
at
the
1993
AAA
meetings
in
Washington,
D.C.,
titled
"Revisiting
the
`North
American
Berdache,"'
as
well
as
a
follow-up
conference
at
the
Field
Museum
in
Chicago
in
1994.
Jacobs
says
in
her
letter
to
participants:

Word
has
been
traveling
among
Native
Americans
in
various
regions
of
the
U.S.A.
and
in
Canada.
We
have
each
been
contacted
by
individuals
(some
representing
groups
who
want
to
attend
our
AAA
session,
at
least)
...
Their
desire
and
hope
for
new
and
useful
research
is
clear
and
urgent.81

The
bully
of
available
funds
was
distributed
as
travel
stipends
to
Native
activists
who
wished
to
attend.
Participants
in
the
first
event
received
drafts
of
papers
to
be
read
by
anthropologists
at
the
AAA
meetings,
and
the
day
was
spent
discussing
first
the
papers
and
then
topics
of
interest
to
attendees.
The
second
event
was
organized
to
gather
even
more
participants
to
address
topics
left
unanswered.
Talks
by
scholars
and
activists
were
recorded
and
their
transcriptions
along
with
prepared
papers
became
the
contents
of
TwoSpirit
People.

Thus,
the
desire
of
anthropologists
for
new
language
was
anticipated
by
Native
people
who
already
were
organizing
across
the
continent
to
change
anthropology.
Once
the
discipline's
resources
were
gathered,
Native
activists
adapted
those
resources
to
produce
changes
in
anthropological
knowledge

128
production
and
to
create
new
discursive
spaces
defined
by
their
stakes
in
that
process.
Translating
long-standing
desires
into
demands
shifted
Native
queer
people
from
being
objects
of
historically
colonial
knowledges
to
subjects
of
knowledge
defined
by
a
collective
pursuit
of
decolonization.

The
production
of
knowledge
now
shifted
for
lesbian
and
gay
anthropologists.
Native
activists
did
not
just
displace
the
category
"berdache,"
they
also
destabilized
institutional
practices
of
anthropology
in
relation
to
Native
peoples
as
a
key
condition
of
the
term's
continued
circulation.
Native
commentators
in
Two-Spirit
People
affirmed
that
they
worked
to
decolonize
the
epistemologies
and
methodologies
structuring
knowledge
about
Native
people.
Terry
Tafoya
(Taos/Warm
Springs)
opposed
a
model
of
anthropology
that
presents
Native
people
as
in
need
of
being
"reminded
by
the
anthropological
Keeper
of
Knowledge"
of
the
truth
of
their
lives.82
Beverly
Little
Thunder
insisted
that
"anthropologists
write
about
those
of
us
who
are
alive
now.
And
they
must
listen
to
us,
hear
us,
and
use
our
own
words,
not
just
their
special
anthropological
language."83
Here
Little
Thunder
opposes
both
authenticating
desires
for
Native
history
and
cursory
engagements
with
contemporary
Native
people
and
their
differences
from
non
Native
expectations.
Anguksuar
Richard
LaFortune
(Yup'ik)
emphasized
t h a t
the
observations
offered
by
Native
people
"cannot
represent
any
monolithic
Native
culture."84
Tafoya
affirmed
both
the
multiplicity
and
the
politicization
of
Native
queer
claims
by
arguing
that
to
identify
as
Two-Spirit

is
to
speak
in
what
Cindy
Patton
has
termed
"dissident
vernaculars,"
terms
that
move
"away
from
the
model
of
pristine
scientific
ideas
which
need
`translation'
for
people
lacking
in
the
dominant
culture's
language
skills
or
concepts"
and
towards
"meanings
created
by
and
in
communities
[that]
are
upsetting
to
the
dominant
culture
precisely
because
speaking
in
one's
own
fashion
is
a
means
of
resistance,
a
strengthening
of
the
subculture

129
 that
has
created
the
new
meaning."''

Evelyn
Blackwood
responded
by
recognizing
that
anthropology
must
critique
its
distanced
determinations
of
Native
truth,
through
which

scholars
wittingly
or
unwittingly
codify
categories
that
are
always
contested
and
achieved
rather
than
natural
and
unchanging.
As
is
clear
from
the
Native
authors
in
this
book,
anthropologists
need
to
do
less
defining
and
universalizing
and
pay
attention
to
what
Two-Spirit
people
say
about
their

Thus,
Native
activist
displacements
of
berdache
promoted
new
bases
for
knowledge
production
in
Native
people's
"own
words."
Their
views
hinged
on
a
difference
between
berdache
or
any
non-Native
category
and
the
function
of
Two-Spirit,
which
presented
a
distinctive
logic
and
method
for
defining
relations
among
gender,
sexuality,
and
nationality
for
Native
people.

Nevertheless,
non-Natives
could
fail
to
recognize
that,
rather
than
being
synonymous
with
all
that
berdache
once
named,
the
category
Two-Spirit
displaced
the
logic
of
berdache
and
opened
all
claims
made
through
it
to
question.
First,
Two-Spirit
held
knowledge
production
accountable
to
anticolonialism,
by
rejecting
the
colonial
conditions
that
made
it
possible
to
write
at
a
distance
from
Native
queer
people's
stakes
in
knowledge
production.
If
non-Native
scholars
continued
to
do
this,
they
remained
part
of
the
problem
activists
critiqued.
Second,
Two-Spirit
challenged
attempts
to
define
a
primordial
role
existing
outside
the
time
of
settler
modernity.87
Despite
invoking
tradition,
Two-Spirit
fails
to
suggest
the
cultural
authenticity
proposed
by
colonial
discourse,
given
that
any
such
use
confronts
its
purpose
to
name
a
link
among
diverse
traditions
and
contemporary
identities
and
activisms.
Third,
and
interrelatedly,
the
definition
of
Two-Spirit
within
border-crossing
networks
evinces
a
transnationalism
that
displaces
timeless

130
uniformity
and
generic
panindigenism.
Two-Spirit
recalls
diverse
Native
national
histories
as
being
potentially
interconnected
across
differences
that
must
be
examined
in
the
dialogic
space
Two-Spirit
creates
for
Native
queer
people.
None
of
these
effects
can
be
produced
by
a
synonym
of
berdache,
nor
are
they
proposed
to
satisfy
desires
for
primordial
and
universal
Indigenous
truth.

These
distinctions
are
reinforced
when
Two-Spirit
activists
address
nonNatives
by
critiquing
the
power
of
settler
colonialism.
For
instance,
non-
Native
queer
critics
may
think
Two-Spirit
proposes
a
sex/gender
binary-
assimilated
from
colonial
heteropatriarchy,
or
reflective
of
Native
norms-that
makes
the
term
incapable
of
queer
critique.
Such
claims
already
can
be
called
into
question
by
considering
that
if
a
sex/gender
system
exceeds
two
recognized
genders,
then
these
will
produce
power
relations
in
multivariant
relationships
that
will
be
incomprehensible
to
a
critique
of
binary
sex/
gender.
Yet
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
critics
already
displace
intimations
of
their
recapitulation
of
heteronormativity
by
noting
that
this
fails
to
learn
from
Two-Spirit
activists
that
all
queer
claims
are
conditioned
by
settler
colonialism.
By
locating
Native
queer
people
within
tribally
specific
knowledges
and
anticolonial
activism,
Two-Spirit
identity
makes
Native
queer
people
unassimilable
by
queer
critiques
based
on
interpreting
and
naturalizing
non-
Natives
in
a
settler
society.
Instead,
non-Native
queer
critics
may
wish
to
join
Native
queer
critics
in
discussing
Two-Spirit
by
first
evaluating
settler
colonialism
as
a
condition
of
their
conversations,
and
of
their
capacity
to
comprehend
this
term.
Resituated
this
way,
non-Native
queer
critics
might
understand
that
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
already
hold
diverse
opinions
about
the
usefulness
of
Two-Spirit
identity
to
their
work,
while
still
sharing
an
interest
to
displace
settler
colonialism
in
queer
theory.88
In
this
sense,
the
genealogical
significance
of
Two-Spirit
for
queer
studies
is
even
greater
than
its
specific
claims,
as
it
joins
other
Native
queer
critiques
in

131
locating
settler
colonialism
as
a
condition
of
Native
and
non-Native
knowledge
production
in
conversation.
Thus,
Two-Spirit
presents
an
Indigenous
epistemology-rooted
in
Native
traditions,
articulating
Native
modernities-that
challenges
colonial
knowledges,
alters
power
relations
with
non-Natives,
and
incites
new
registers
through
which
Native
people
can
join
and
hold
non-Natives
accountable
to
work
for
Indigenous
decolonization.

Two-Spirit
activism
fundamentally
transformed
conversations
on
berdache.
SOLGA
responded
to
critiques
of
anthropology's
colonial
legacies
by
shifting
study
of
cultures
as
social
units
to
processes
of
meaning
making
in
histories
of
colonization,
nationalism,
migration,
and
economic
and
political
globalization.
Simultaneously,
queer
studies
challenged
lesbian/
gay
logics
by
focusing
on
the
genealogical
study
of
power
relations
producing
sexual
and
gender
marginality
and
normativity,
including
colonialism.
These
changes
led
to
SOLGA
changing
its
name
in
2010
to
the
Association
for
Queer
Anthropology
and
committing
itself
to
examine
sexuality
and
gender
as
relational
to
race,
class,
nationality,
and
disability
within
histories
of
colonization
and
globalization.
Two-Spirit
activism
did
not
reduce
the
popularization
of
Native
culture
as
a
resource
for
non-Native
gender
and
sexual
liberations,
but
more
critiques
appeared
of
this
practice,
such
as
Towle
and
Morgan's
critique
of
the
citation
of
"third
genders"
in
U.S.
transgender
politics.
Gay
men's
and,
more
broadly,
queer
counterculturisms
grew
in
this
time
precisely
by
adapting
Two-Spirit
identity
and
a
resurgence
of
traditional
knowledge
to
the
Indigenous
nature
they
sought.
But
Two-Spirit's
redefinition
of
tradition
as
part
of
decolonial
activism
also
lent
a
new
and
direct
accountability
to
Native
queer
activists.
In
the
process,
non-Native
queers
became
more
adept
at
answering
Native
queer
critiques
by
not
doing
what
they
once
egregiously
had
done-projecting
colonial
discourse
through
berdache.
However,
they
did
not
necessarily
become
any
more
adept
at
what
few
had
done
before:
recognizing
settler
colonialism
as
a
condition
of
their

132
existence
and
of
their
relation
to
Native
peoples
and
Native
queer
critiques.

Part
II,
"Movements,"
shifts
from
genealogies
of
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
to
historical
and
ethnographic
study
of
projects
that
they
produced
in
the
late
twentieth
century.
The
initial
chapters
contain
an
internal
contrast,
by
portraying
first
how
non-Native
queer
projects
formed
at
a
distance
from
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people,
which
are
then
examined
through
the
critical
lens
of
concurrent
Native
activism.
The
final
chapter
focuses
entirely
on
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
organizing
that
arose
in
the
context
of
Native
HIV/AIDS
organizing.
This
section
portrays
movements
that
form
not
separately
but
within
multiple
interrelationships
along
lines
of
tension
linking
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities.
The
chapters
address
three
qualities
of
colonial
discourse
in
U.S.
queer
politics
that
are
displaced
by
Native
critiques:
non-Native
queer
desires
for
authentic
culture,
ancient
roots,
and
a
global
purview.
By
negotiating
the
cultural
authenticity
of
queer
politics,
seeking
ancestral
ties
on
settled
land,
or
projecting
colonial
desires
on
a
global
scale,
non-Native
queer
cultures
and
politics
negotiated
their
settler
colonial
heritance
in
relationship
to
the
discrepant
work
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists.

133


134
SETTLER
CITIZENSIIIP-its
acquisition
and
its
contestation-conditions
the
relationality
of
non-Native
and
Native
people
within
queer
politics.
Normative
histories
of
U.S.
queer
politics
locate
freedom
in
the
removal
of
state-sanctioned
persecutions
and
the
securing
of
state
protection
of
sexual
and
gender
diversity.
This
political
progression
arises
within
and
elides
an
ongoing
settler
colonial
situation,
in
which
the
state
grants
"freedoms"
by
incorporating
diverse
peoples
under
its
rule,
beginning
with
the
colonial
control
of
Native
nations
on
Native
lands.
Whether
markedly
restricted
or
nominally
universal,
settler
citizenship
confers
opportunity,
liberty,
and
security
by
facilitating
the
colonial
domestication
or
replacement
of
Native
nationality.
The
white-supremacist
terms
of
settler
citizenship
are
transformed
under
a
civil
rights
state
into
a
project
that
nominally
bars
discrimination
from
citizenship
while
still
regulating
access
by
race,
class,
and
nation
as
well
as
gender,
sexuality,
and
disability.
Nevertheless,
white
settler
civilization
remains
citizenship's
historical,
cultural,
and
moral
foundation,
even
as
its
conferral
on
Native
peoples
assimilates
them
as
ethnic
difference,
creates
them
as
wards
of
state
management,
or
attempts
to
legislate
them
out
of
existence.'

Queer
scholarship
of
citizenship
can
examine
how
queer
"freedoms"
become
imaginable
in
the
context
of
ongoing
settler
colonialism
and
Native
resistance.'
I
argue
in
this
chapter
that
queer
narratives
of
cultural
integrity
inflected
by
"race"
locate
freedom
in
belonging
to
a
settler
nation.
Scholars
have
noted
that
U.S.
queer
projects
define
their
integrity
by
appealing
to
the
cultural
status
of
an
ethnic
group
or
to
the
legal
status
granted
racial
and

135
national
minorities,
through
"racial
analogy."3
However,
they
have
not
asked
how
these
normatively
white
and
non-Native
queer
routes
to
"race"
play
on
indigeneity
as
a
history
or
model
of
the
authenticity
they
seek,
while
absenting
Native
people
from
the
"racial"
queerness
that
secures
settler
citizenship.
In
my
analysis,
"race"
illuminates
settler
colonial
definitions
of
queer
cultural
citizenship
in
two
ways.
First,
narrating
"race"
invokes
essentializing
ideas
of
bounded
sociality
or
authentic
culture-including,
colonial
discourses
on
indigeneity-that,
once
included
in
or
modeled
by
queerness,
grant
it
the
integrity
to
counter
theories
of
perversion
and
defend
group
rights.
Second,
correlating
queerness
to
"race"
locates
it
in
U.S.
political
discourses
for
managing
social
difference
that
function
to
occlude
Native
peoples:
by
assigning
Natives
as
"race"
a
numerical
insignificance
or
imminent
disappearance
that
makes
them
tangential
to
"race"
politics,
and
by
erasing
Native
nationality
as
a
project
that
could
undercut
state
power,
including
a
power
to
narrate
citizenship
in
relation
to
"race."
Queer
people
participate
in
this
process
by
arguing
that
the
"racial"
qualities
of
their
constituencies-
multiracial
in
scope,
or
comparable
to
a
racial
group-should
grant
recognition
as
a
social
minority
worthy
of
protection
from
injury
and
of
full
citizenship.
As
Wendy
Brown
suggests,
each
such
claim
reproduces
whiteness
as
a
condition
of
queers
as
"racial"
and
queers
as
citizens.'
But
I
further
argue
that
whiteness
produces
queers
as
non-Native,
and
their
politics
as
a
normatively
white
and
non-Native
claim
of
belonging
to
settler
citizenship.

I
interpret
the
formation
of
U.
S.
queer
politics
as
a
project
of
settler
citizenship
by
reference
to
Elizabeth
Povinelli's
analysis
of
liberal
settler
multiculturalism.'
My
reading
resituates
queer
and
critical
race
scholarship
on
histories
and
processes
of
U.S.
citizenship
in
a
critique
of
white-supremacist
settler
colonialism.
In
the
late
twentieth
century,
a
civil
rights
era
answered
historic
racial
and
national
discrimination
by
conferring
citizenship,
which
then
produced
modes
of
multiculturalism
increasingly
contested
by
neoliberal

136
post-civil
rights
critiques.'
Povinelli
interprets
such
social
relations
in
the
context
of
settler
colonialism,
in
which
the
settler
state
regulates
freedoms
by
producing
liberal
subjects
of
rights,
who
articulate
multicultural
governance
by
adjudicating
race
differences
in
a
manner
that
delegitimatizes
Indigenous
claims
on
national
integrity.
I
interpret
liberal
settler
multiculturalism
and
its
neoliberal
contestation
in
the
United
States
as
contexts
in
which
queers
sought
their
own
"racial"
integrity
in
white,
nonNative,
and
settler
colonial
form.
Queers
tracked
paths
to
settler
citizenship
by
incorporating
and
transcending
indigeneity
to
attain
settler
modernity.
That
journey
could
be
contested
by
the
very
proposal
of
racial
analogy,
if
it
placed
the
whiteness
of
its
proponents
in
sharp
relief,
or
marked
queers
of
color
as
negotiating
queer
politics
distinctly.
Nevertheless,
narratives
of
queer
citizenship
as
"racial"
already
sought
to
absorb
queers
of
color
into
a
normatively
white,
non-Native,
and
settler
colonial
project,
a
process
that
even
queer
of
color
critiques
did
not
entirely
question.
The
most
direct
displacements
of
liberal
settler
multiculturalism
and
its
conditioning
of
queer
politics
arose
in
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activism.
During
the
early
1990s,
the
New
York
City
Two-
Spirit
organization
WeWah
and
BarChee-
Ampe
mobilized
queer
of
color
coalitions
in
critiquing
white-supremacist
settler
colonialism
under
Native
leadership
and
while
pursuing
Indigenous
decolonization.
Their
work
demonstrates
how
Native
queer
activists
and
allied
queers
of
color
identified
and
challenged
the
colonial
formation
of
U.S.
queer
projects
while
imagining
a
queer
politics
that
could
directly
displace
the
colonial
power
and
rule
of
a
settler
state.

Gay
American
History
and
Gay
American
Indians

I n
Jonathan
Katz
announced
a
new
generation
of
gay
and
lesbian
activism
when
he
defended
gay
and
lesbian
culture
as
worthy
of
national
inclusion.
The
`American
focus"
of
his
landmark
book
Gay
American
History
sought
to

137
address
the
influence
of
a
particular
national
setting
on
the
historical
forms
of
homosexuality
found
within
it."7
Katz's
argument
indexes
a
shift
in
U.S.
sexual
politics
in
the
1970s.
Research
for
his
book
began
in
amid
the
universalizing
theories
of
sexual
liberation
characteristic
of
gay
liberation
and
lesbian
feminism.
Yet,
by
mid-decade,
a
minoritizing
defense
of
civil
rights
informed
activists
and
scholars
first
inspired
in
the
earlier
moment-as
was
Katz,
who
first
conceived
his
project
while
participating
in
New
York
City's
Gay
Activists
Alliance
(GAA).
The
book
promotes
minority
cultural
identity
to
counter
the
individuating
and
pathologizing
effects
of
phobic
theories
of
homosexuality,
as
its
first
words
proclaim:

We
have
been
the
silent
minority,
the
silenced
minority-invisible
women,
invisible
men
...
Our
existence
as
a
long-oppressed,
long-resistant
social
group
was
not
explored.
We
remained
an
unknown
people,
our
character
defamed
...
That
time
is
over.
The
people
of
the
shadows
have
seen
the
light;
Gay
people
are
coming
out-and
moving
on-to
organized
action
against
an
oppressive
society.
(1)

Katz
then
traces
his
claim
on
the
existence
of
homosexuals
as
a
people
with
our
own
history,
traditions,
and
culture"
(7)
to
a
general
political
moment
in
the
United
States
of
"radical
social
change
in
which
each
group,
starting
from
a
sense
of
its
own
particular
oppression,
is
struggling
for
the
democratic
control
of
that
society
in
which
all
work,
live,
and
try
to
love"
(9).

Katz
assembles
archival
records
within
chapters
that
proclaim
a
developmental
narrative,
progressing
from
the
first
two
chapters,
titled
"Trouble:
1566-1966"
and
"Treatment:
1884-1974,"
to
the
concluding
chapters,
"Resistance:
1859-1972"
and
"Love:
1779-1932."
These
themes
describe
experiences
of
gay
men
and
lesbians
throughout
the
history
of
the
United
States
and
the
prior
British
colonies,
while
the
book
highlights
race,

138
c l a s s ,
nation,
and
gender
differences
among
them
despite
the
overrepresentation
of
Anglo
men
in
archival
records.
Katz
interrupts
this
thematic
progression
to
insert
two
chapters
that
address
distinct
groups.
Chapter
3,
"Passing
Women:
1782-1920,"
addresses
the
recent
women's
liberation
and
Lesbian-feminist
movements"
by
questioning
masculinist
histories
and
making
lesbians
and
gay
men
"equal
in
quality
and
quantity"
in
his
book
(2).
He
does
not
highlight
race
in
a
comparable
chapter
responding
to
critiques
by
people
of
color
of
white
gay
and
lesbian
racism,
although
people
of
color
are
referenced
from
time
to
time.
But
while
race
receives
no
special
attention,
nation
and
culture
do
in
chapter
4,
"Native
Americans/Gay
Americans:
1528-1976."
This
chapter
does
not
respond
to
Native
critiques
of
non-Native
gays
and
lesbians-although
such
a
critique
does
appear
in
sources
it
reprints,
as
we
will
see-but
focuses
instead
on
collating
colonial
anthropological
reports
of
the
histories
of
Native
cultures.
Native
people's
appearance
here
marks
their
absence
in
the
rest
of
the
book-that
is,
from
histories
of
the
United
States.
Native
people
differ
in
this
book
from
nonNative
people
of
color,
who
do
appear
(sporadically)
in
the
text
as
evidence
of
multiracial
diversity
in
U.S.
society.
Thus,
a
key
effect
of
the
chapter
is
to
frame
the
subjects,
topics,
and
audiences
of
the
rest
of
the
book-
the
subjects
of
"Gay
America"-as
non-Natives.
Even
when
highlighted
in
a
narrative
of
gender
and
sexual
diversity,
Native
people
are
bracketed
by
a
distinctive
national
temporality
into
the
culturally
authentic
Native
prehistory
of
the
historical
modernity
of
the
`America"
that
supplants
them.
Although
this
book
was
lauded
by
gay
and
lesbian
anthropologists
as
a
first
collection
of
rare
colonial
accounts
of
berdache,
its
popularization
of
Native
peoples
in
a
"denial
of
coevalness"
established
"Gay
Americans"
as
non-Native
inheritors
of
settler
colonialism
who
adopt
knowledge
of
Native
culture
as
part
of
a
primordial
gay
and
American
history.

Katz
offers
his
representation
of
Native
Americans
as
a
form
of

139
anticolonialism
for
gay
and
lesbian
politics.
He
argues
that
colonial
violence
transformed
Native
societies,
using
the
language
of
progressive
alliance
politics:

the
Christianization
of
Native
Americans
and
the
colonial
appropriation
of
the
continent
by
white,
Western
"civilization"
included
the
attempt
by
the
conquerors
to
eliminate
various
traditional
forms
of
Indian
homosexuality-as
part
of
their
attempt
to
destroy
that
Native
culture
which
might
fuel
resistance-a
form
of
cultural
genocide.
(284)

These
words
at
first
may
appear
to
evoke
Native
feminist
and
queer
critiques,
but
the
argument
that
actually
drives
how
the
book
narrates
its
evidence
is
the
recovery
of
Native
tradition
for
non-Native
gay
liberation:

The
existence
of
homosexuality
among
the
people
who
originally
inhabited
the
United
States
will
no
doubt
hold
a
certain
special
fascination
for
those
Lesbians
and
Gay
men
who
are
today
beginning
to
repossess
the
national
and
world
history
of
their
people-part
of
the
struggle
for
social
change
and
to
win
control
over
their
own
lives.
(2
84;
emphasis
added)

The
anticolonialism
Katz
offers
to
gays
and
lesbians
naturalizes
settlement
so
well
that
it
appropriates
Native
history
as
a
former
and
renewed
possession
of
non-Natives.
Native
peoples
in
fact
are
not
those
who
originally
inhabited
the
United
States"
given
that
the
settler
state
exists
in
violation
of
the
prior
and
sustained
sovereignty
of
Native
nations.
But
this
implicit
naturalization
of
settlement
then
permits
contrasting
Native
people
as
"original"
inhabitants
of
the
United
States
to
"Lesbians
and
Gay
men"
as
its
present
inhabitants,
whereby
the
latter
as
non-Natives
appear
to
be
related
to,
yet
distinct
from
Natives.
Racial
and
national
analogies
frame
gay
men
and
lesbians
as
a
people
in
"struggle
to
win
control
over
their
own
lives"
while
simultaneously

140
authorizing
them
to
take
from
peoples
to
whom
they,
as
non-Natives
do
not
belong
the
sexual
and
gender
liberation
they
desire.
Their
incorporation
of
Native
culture
as
part
of
their
history
displaces
Native
gay
men
and
lesbians
from
a
modern
politics
that
would
try
to
"include"
them,
but
first
displaces
them
from
modern
subjectivity.
Shifting
lesbians
and
gay
men
from
the
pathology
of
"homosexuality"
to
the
integrity
of
a
"people"
lets
them
adopt
the
trappings
of
Indigenous
authenticity
as
part
of
the
integrity
they
require
to
claim
rights.
Making
gay
men
and
lesbians
analogous
to
racialized
or
Native
peoples
defines
them
as
white
subjects
not
otherwise
racialized
or
indigenized
in
a
settler
society,
albeit
now
with
a
capacity
to
include
Native
people
and
people
of
color
in
a
"peoplehood"
that
whites
can
represent.
The
logic
of
white
settler
colonialism
is
at
work
when
racial
analogy
lets
gay
men
and
lesbians
adopt
Indigenous
cultural
authenticity,
in
a
settler
narrative,
as
if
it
were
the
origin
of
gay
America.
Katz
locates
Native
people
as
primordial
to
help
non-Natives
secure
settler
citizenship.
The
performance
of
settler
modernity
remains
compatible
with
believing
in
their
anticolonialism,
as
non-
Native
gay
men
and
lesbians
can
portray
Native
culture
as
something
they
adopt
and
defend
as
they
seek
their
own
freedom
as
settler
citizens.

Katz's
chapter
"Native
Americans/Gay
Americans"
closes
by
breaking
from
anthropological
narrative
to
republish
accounts
by
Native
gay
men
and
lesbians:
a
1965
interview
with
Elmer
Gage
(Mohave)
in
One
Magazine
and
a
1976
interview
in
the
Advocate
with
GAI's
leaders
Barbara
Cameron
and
Randy
Burns.
Katz's
project
is
concluding
even
as
contemporary
Native
gay
men
and
lesbians
are
beginning
to
explain
their
lives
to
interested
non-Natives.
In
these
interviews,
non-Natives
defined
sexual
subjectivity
and
politics
by
adapting
Native
activist
claims
to
their
own.
Yet
the
Native
gays
and
lesbians
being
interviewed
displaced
settler
desires
and
defined
their
lives
on
discrepant
terms.

141
 One's
"rare
interview"
in
1965
with
a
"homosexual
Native
American,"
in
interviewer
Bob
Waltrip's
words,
contrasts
non-Native
homophile
activism
with
Gage's
identity
in
Mohave
society.
The
interview
appeared
six
years
after
One
published
Dorr
Legg's
account
of
berdache
as
evidence
of
sexual
inversion,
and
five
years
after
Mattachine
Review
published
Omer
Stewart's
review
of
the
anthropology
of
berdache.$
Unlike
either
text,
Waltrip
frames
Gage
not
so
much
through
the
object
berdache
as
in
a
tone
reminiscent
of
Kent
Mackenzie's
1961
film
The
Exiles,
in
which
a
muckraking
critique
of
settler
stereotypes
of
Indians
portrays
Native
people
as
tragically
impoverished
by
lost
authenticity.
Nevertheless,
Gage
displaces
Waltrip's
reading
by
narrating
the
normalcy
of
his
life
struggles
and
their
mediation
by
his
secure
location
within
Mohave
kinship
and
religion.
When
Waltrip
invites
Gage
to
describe
his
life
as
embattled,
Gage
speaks
instead
of
the
household
he
and
his
elderly
aunt,
who
he
calls
his
grandmother,
keep
on
Mohave
territory,
where
his
leasing
of
land
to
agricultural
firms
lets
him
care
for
her
while
participating
in
Mohave
cultural
practices.
He
participates
as
a
Bird
Dancer
in
local
ceremonies
in
addition
to
producing
beadwork,
taught
to
him
by
his
"grandmother"
at
a
young
age;
as
she
interjects
during
the
interview,
He
was
interested."9
Gage
mentions
his
longing
for
a
partner,
but
he
deflects
Waltrip's
suggestion
that
one
could
be
found
in
an
urban
gay
community
by
relating
the
recognition
he
receives
in
Mohave
community,
from
early
sexual
experiences
with
other
boys
to
seeing
the
very
Mohave
men
who
tease
him
about
their
ongoing
sexual
friendships.

His
account
echoes
early-twentieth-century
stories
told
by
Mohave
and
non-Native
writers
about
the
lives
of
hwame,
a
term
Gage
does
not
use
but
that
resonates
with
the
gendering
of
his
upbringing,
his
relationships,
and
his
commitment
to
religious
Waltrip,
apparently
ignorant
of
these
potential
connections,
presses
Gage
to
discuss
his
life
as
being
more
difficult
than
that
of
gays
in
the
city.
Gage
responds
that
although
urban
gay
life
is
accessible
to

142
him,
he
chooses
the
value
of
his
life
in
Mohave
community.
Gage
defies
Waltrip's
opposition
of
reservation/poverty/conservative
tradition
from
urban/wealth/liberal
modernity
by
narrating
a
facility
within
Mohave
life
with
capital,
migration,
and
modernity
that
he
prefers.
Without
asserting
an
authentic
past-he
even
repeats
Waltrip
to
call
his
life
"typically
American"-
Gage
deflects
non-Native
desires
even
as
he
adapts
their
interests
to
assert
a
place
in
U.S.
society
based
on
Mohave
survival.

In
the
final
interview
reprinted
by
Katz,
Cameron
and
Burns
announce
the
founding
of
Gay
American
Indians
one
year
prior
to
the
publication
of
Gay
American
Both
identify
themselves
as
urban,
pantribal
activists
who
challenge
colonial
legacies
in
Native
people's
lives
and
seek
dialogue
with
Native
gay
men
and
lesbians
across
the
country.
Cameron
succinctly
states
how
their
work
differs
from
that
of
the
non-Native
gay
and
lesbian
movement:
"We
were
first
and
foremost
a
group
for
each
other
...
Bringing
together
gay
Indians
is
our
most
important
current
task."
Burns
explains
that
GAI
organizes
by
raising
awareness
in
Native
communities
of
the
"trampled
traditions
of
our
people"
in
which
"Gay
people
were
respected
parts
of
the
tribes"
(333).
Cameron
locates
this
within
a
broader
critique
of
settler
society
by
Native
gay
men
and
lesbians.
Asked
by
interviewer
Dean
Gengle
of
her
reaction
to
the
U.S.
Bicentennial,
she
says:

Angry...
Its
ridiculous.
What
should
Indians
celebrate?
Two-hundred
years
of
broken
promises,
land
theft,
genocide
and
rape?
It
is
one
thing
to
talk
about
"celebration"
and
another
to
look
at
the
little
Vietnam
the
government
has
going
in
South
Dakota.
Were
going
to
be
demonstrating
in
Philadelphia
in
'76.
There
are
plans
for
demonstrations
at
Mount
Rushmore.
Gay
Indians
will
be
there.
(334)

Despite
Gengle's
interest
in
portraying
a
gay
group
for
Native
people,

143
Cameron
and
Burns
frame
GAI
as
a
Native
organization
that
commits
Native
gay
men
and
lesbians
to
broader
Native
activism
for
decolonization.
They
cite
Native
histories
of
gender
and
sexuality
not
to
invite
ties
to
non-Natives
but
to
support
each
other
as
Native
gay
men
and
lesbians
while
convincing
Native
communities
of
their
belonging
so
they
can
join
in
working
for
decolonization.
They
call
on
non-Native
gay
men
and
lesbians
to
support
them
on
these
terms,
which
would
locate
non-Natives
as
allies
in
a
struggle
to
challenge
settler
society.

Gengle
nevertheless
ends
by
framing
GAI
for
the
Advocate
in
terms
that
persisted
in
gay
and
lesbian
media
for
years:
If
they
do
succeed
in
reasserting
the
wisdom
of
native
American
tribes
concerning
gay
people,
all
of
us
will
benefit"
(ibid.).
As
the
final
words
of
the
chapter
"Native
Americans/
Gay
Americans,"
Gengle
hails
an
all
of
us"
who
adopt
Native
"wisdom,"
repeating
Katz,
who
addresses
"Gay
Americans"
as
non-Natives
who
need
Native
history
to
achieve
their
own
freedom.
Native
stories
politicize
a
gay
and
lesbian
minority
whose
internal
racial
diversity
is
bound
by
culturally
authentic
Native
roots
that
echo
in
claims
on
multicultural
settler
citizenship.
In
the
wake
of
this
book,
stories
of
Native
peoples
as
part
of
gay
"history"
would
echo
within
U.S.
sexual
minority
claim
on
liberal
settler
multiculturalism
and
justify
claiming
sexual
minority
cultural
authenticity
and
settler
citizenship
as
non-Native
acts.

Yet
the
very
distinctions
addressed
here
reveal
the
formation
of
nonNative
and
Native
queer
modernities
in
conversation.
Claims
on
Native
history
that
naturalize
gay
men
and
lesbians
as
non-Native
appear
simultaneously
with
Native
gay
and
lesbian
critiques
of
non-Native
appropriations.
Popular
gay
media
quoted
Native
gay
men
and
lesbians
as
telling
non-Natives
that
they
are
seeking
to
renew
their
place
within
their
nations
by
leading
efforts
for
decolonization.
Yet,
in
non-Native
media,
that
plain
speech
always
appeared

144
askew,
always
outside
the
necessary
interpretive
frame.
I
am
highlighting
Native
gay
and
lesbian
claims
because
they
show,
ironically,
that
their
announcements
of
a
refusal
to
be
colonized
are
precisely
what
non-Natives
appropriated
as
a
basis
for
their
own
pursuit
of
settler
citizenship.
As
in
Grahn's
witnessing
of
the
GAI
poster,
encountering
Native
gay
men
and
lesbians
who
assert
their
distinctions
triggered
a
whole
chain
of
associations
for
non-Natives
that
already
defined
liberated
sexual
minorities
on
normatively
white
settler
terms.
Thus,
in
these
encounters,
both
Native
and
non-Native
gay
men
and
lesbians
narrated
divergent
politics
precisely
by
engaging
one
another.
They
also
demonstrate
that
from
the
inception
of
cultural
appropriation
in
late-twentieth-century
sexual
minority
politics,
a
critique
interrupting
it
appeared
in
non-Native
narratives.
Whether
admitted
or
not,
non-Native
gay
and
lesbian
claims
on
Native
histories
have
remained
interdependent
with
the
decolonizing
critiques
of
Native
gay
and
lesbian
activists.
From
this
point
forward,
non-Native
appropria
tions
of
Native
activist
work
would
arise
in
conversation,
making
future
claims
answerable
to
the
degree
to
which
they
ignored
or
engaged
their
linked
history.

Race
and
Coalition
in
the
National
Gay
and
Lesbian
Task
Force

Theories
of
the
trope
of
Native
disappearance
suggest
that
absenting
Native
people
from
a
story
tells
a
story
of
settler
colonialism.
Just
as
claiming
Native
peoples
as
history
portrayed
sexual
minority
politics
as
non-Native,
the
national
stakes
of
Native
peoples
readily
disappear
when
sexual
minority
politics
seeks
fulfillment
through
settler
citizenship.
The
1973
founding
of
the
National
Gay
Task
Force
(NGTF)
and
its
growth
into
the
National
Gay
and
Lesbian
Task
Force
(NGLTF)
indicate
how
critically
engaging
normatively
white
queer
politics
to
pursue
multiracial
and
antiracist
work
readily
naturalizes
settler
citizenship
as
a
horizon
of
freedom
and
distances
from
Native
queer
critiques.
Progressive
antiracist
coalitions
such
as
those
formed

145
by
NGLTF
consistently
challenged
the
racial
and
sexual
boundaries
of
U.S.
citizenship,
but
in
ways
that
permitted
its
settler
formation
to
remain
intact.

NGLTF
has
been
a
significant
national
group
in
U.S.
gay
and
lesbian
civil
rights
activism,
as
it
set
up
the
country's
first
national
gay
lobby
and,
after
the
rise
of
the
Human
Rights
Campaign
(HRC),
the
only
one
to
consistently
pursue
multiracial
and
antiracist
coalition
politics.
Under
Director
Urvashi
Vaid
and
the
influence
of
the
policy
institute
she
founded,
NGLTF
during
the
1990s
focused
on
coordinating
grassroots
activism
around
racial
and
economic
justice
agendas
related
to
immigration,
welfare,
and
citizenship.
The
HRC,
in
contrast,
has
promoted
homonationalism
by
focusing
on
fund-raising
from
a
middle-
to
high-income
constituency
while
promoting
national
integration
of
sexual
minorities
through
such
themes
as
gay
marriage,
patriotism,
and
military
service.12
If
we
interpret
homonationalism
as
a
colonial
project,
HRC
is
exemplary
of
the
settler
formation
of
U.S.
queer
modernities.
But
however
satisfying
such
a
reading
might
be
to
HRC's
critics,
it
does
little
to
explain
how
the
lives,
theories,
and
activism
of
more
politically
progressive
queers
also
reflect
a
desire
to
gain
rights
in
the
settler
state.
In
fact,
NGLTF
historically
promoted
multiracial
coalitions
precisely
to
link
sexual
minorities
across
racial
differences
in
common
pursuit
of
liberal
settler
multiculturalism.
The
group's
history
is
a
testimony
to
how
settlement
can
be
naturalized
even
within
progressive
trajectories
of
multiracial
civil
rights
politics.

The
National
Gay
Task
Force
presented
itself
as
representative
of
gay
and
lesbian
diversity
and
identified
as
accountable
to
grassroots
organizing,
despite
its
degree
of
accountability
remaining
open
to
criticism.
After
activists
in
1973
successfully
reversed
the
American
Psychiatric
Association
(APA)
designation
of
homosexuality
as
mental
illness,
NGTF
sought
to
coordinate
future
national
activism
that
would
defy
individuating
theories
of
pathology
by
defending
the

146
integrity
of
a
social
minority
with
evidence
from
science,
history,
and
culture.
In
the
collected
NGLTF
papers,
records
from
the
time
of
the
APA
protests
include
a
paper
by
Judd
Marmor
delivered
at
a
1973
psychiatric
convention,
which
marshals
anthropological
accounts
of
berdache
and
Indigenous
gender
and
sexuality
as
justification
for
gay
and
lesbian
civil
rights.13
In
the
wake
of
the
protests'
success,
NGTF
members
staffed
educational
booths
at
annual
APA
meetings.
Photographic
records
portray
their
tables
set
before
posters
with
photos
of
people
participating
in
family
and
work
roles,
and
all
arrayed
under
a
banner
proclaiming
"We
Are
Everywhere."
The
apparent
whiteness
of
the
figures
in
the
poster
and
the
booth
staff
conveys
an
image
of
a
white
"we"
for
science
to
affirm
as
representative
of
U.S.
society.
Using
a
Gay
Liberation
Front
(GLF)
slogan
to
portray
a
sexual
minority
as
being
everywhere
in
modern
society
also
echoes
a
universalizing
suggestion
that
sexual
diversity
exists
everywhere
in
human
life.
Yet
if
efforts
to
establish
legitimacy
as
a
minority
hinge
on
incorporating
Indigenous
evidence,
once
won,
it
appears
to
transcend
that
difference
with
the
reweighted
value
of
claiming
white
settler
citizenship.

The
presumptive
white
constituency
of
NGTF's
sexual
minority
civil
rights
efforts
fractured
in
the
face
of
gender
and
racial
criticism.
Women
staff
members
critiqued
gender
inequality
and
formed
a
Lesbian
Caucus
in
response
to
the
normalizing
of
gay
male
issues.
Their
feminist
intention
to
liberate
a
multiracial
constituency
invested
radical
white
women
with
a
power
to
advocate
for
all
women,
regardless
of
race.
In
the
late
1970s,
recognition
of
the
paucity
of
staff
of
color
at
NGTF
led
lesbians
and
gay
men
of
color
within
the
organization
and
from
allied
groups
to
press
for
an
integrated
race,
class,
gender,
and
sexuality
analysis
in
activism.
They
won
support
from
NGTF
to
cosponsor
a
first
Conference
of
Third
World
Lesbians
and
Gays
in
Washington,
D.C.,
in
1979.
Autonomously
organized
by
activists
of
color,
the
event
inspired
a
spate
of
early
1980s
organizing
by
gay
men
and
lesbians
of

147
color
separately
from
organizations
run
by
white
progressives.
Meanwhile,
the
Lesbian
Caucus
persuaded
NGTF
to
change
its
name
to
NGLTF,
and
the
organization
supported
leading
roles
by
activists
of
color
linked
to
antisexist,
multiracial,
and
cross-class
politics.
This
history
shows
that
progressive
gay
and
lesbian
politics
negotiated
its
white
origins-at
first
primarily
masculinist,
but
ultimately
in
a
more
feminist
form-by
attempting
to
be
inclusive
of
gender
and
race
differences
in
a
historically
white
political
model
and
space.

NGLTF
became
a
leading
force
in
sexual
rights
activism
by
calling
for
coalition
work
across
sexuality,
gender,
class,
and
race,
as
Urvashi
Vaid
explains
in
her
book
Virtual
Equality:
The
Mainstreaming
of
Gay
and
Lesbian
Liberation
(1995).
She
cited
gay,
lesbian,
and
AIDS
activism
among
people
of
color
when
she
called
on
NGLTF
to
confront
its
historical
whiteness,
even
as
she
promoted
NGLTF
as
a
solution
if
it
helped
lead
broader
sexual,
racial,
and
economic
justice
activism
to
gain
rights
in
the
state.
She
traces
the
racial
formation
of
gay
and
lesbian
politics
to
three
successive
historical
moments.
She
critiques
initial
gains
by
"organizing
around
individual
identity"
as
problematic
for
having
proposed
a
unified
"culture"
that
neglects
differences,
and
then
"diversity
politics
or
multiculturalism"
as
problematic
for
its
tokenism
and
resulting
minor
change.
Finally,
she
lauds
a
present
moment
of
"forging
coalitions
within
the
gay
movement
as
well
as
between
gay
people
and
straight
allies,"
in
which
movements
break
from
identity
politics
to
find
common
ground
across
differences.
Vaid
claims
that
such
coalitions
will
be
effective
only
if
they
are
led
by
groups
like
NGLTF,
rather
than
by
smaller,
local,
or
more
specific
groups.
Dismayed
by
what
she
calls
a
"stunning
lack
of
interaction
across
racial
lines"
in
national
activism,
she
admits
that
"I
find
myself
torn
about
the
question
of
race-specific
versus
multiracial
organizing"
(291).
While
noting
that
"'integration'
could
pose
...
a
possible
lessening
of
visibility,
priority,
and
empowerment,"
she
suggests
that
"race-specific"
organizing
ultimately
may
be
responsible
for
reproducing
whiteness:

148
 At
the
risk
of
offending
colleagues
whom
I
admire
enormously,
without
whose
work
in
the
racial
minority
AIDS
and
gay
organizations
we
would
not
have
visibility
and
empowerment
that
allows
me
to
even
make
this
statement,
I
believe
that
race-based
methods
of
organizing
unaccountably
maintain
the
status
quo
on
racial
prejudice.
Our
work
within
single-race
organizations
must
be
augmented
by
the
presence
of
a
multiracial
movement
in
order
to
become
fully
effective.
(292)

Vaid
does
not
advocate
abandoning
organizing
by
people
of
color,
but
she
does
promote
the
mainstreaming
of
gay
and
lesbian
liberation"
by
investing
national
groups
with
the
power
to
unify
more
specific
agendas.
For
her,
making
sexual
rights
politics
coherent-gathering
constituents
across
their
differences
for
collective
recognition-is
desirable
because
it
produces
a
group
status
that
the
liberal
state
can
recognize.
By
defending
coalitions,
Vaid
complicates
political
efforts
to
enforce
unified
identity,
but
her
solution
ensures
the
influence
of
national
leaders
who
receive
the
power
to
speak
for
coalitions
when
securing
state
recognition
for
their
diverse
membership.

Native
activists
place
Vaid's
model
and
the
power
of
the
settler
state
to
grant
freedom
in
question.
Vaid
does
not
examine
the
state's
colonial
interest
in
determining
freedom
for
those
it
rules,
or
announcing
its
magnanimity
when
it
confers
recognition.
She
does
not
address
the
national
interests
of
Native
peoples,
and
only
cites
Native
activists
twice
as
examples
of
activism
by
queers
of
color,
mistaking
them
for
a
racial/ethnic
minority
in
a
multiracial
society
(90,
289-90).
These
elisions
are
important
not
because
they
might
be
fixed
by
more
inclusion,
but
because
they
indicate
that
Vaid
and
the
NGLTF
naturalize
liberal
settler
multiculturalism
as
their
horizon
of
freedom,
one
that
is
displaced
by
anticolonial
Native
activism.
Gay
American
Indians
problematized
white
sexual
minority
politics
on
the
national
and
transnational
grounds
of
Native
sovereignty.
Cameron
and
Burns
represented
their
work
as

149
convincing
Native
nations
to
accept
gay
men
and
lesbians
so
that
their
constituencies
could
jointly
challenge
settler
colonialism.
By
honoring
tradition
and
defying
colonial
heteropatriarchy,
Native
lesbian
and
gay
activists
sought
their
own
liberation
by
freeing
their
peoples
from
colonial
control.
The
national
and
transnational
scope
of
their
efforts
provided
a
context
for
non-Natives
to
ally
not
with
a
Native
sexual
minority
but
as
common
critics
of
colonial
heteropatriarchy
joined
across
nationality
to
challenge
the
settler
state.
The
resulting
coalitions
would
displace
the
state's
colonial
apparatus
as
a
horizon
of
freedom
not
only
for
sovereign
Native
peoples
but
also
for
non-Natives,
who
now
could
define
their
queer
politics
in
opposition
to
the
incorporative
power
of
the
settler
state.

The
models
of
NGLTF
and
Native
activism
produced
contrasting
results.
In
the
1990s,
NGLTF
responded
to
a
backlash
against
civil
rights
activism
by
creating
a
new
policy
institute
under
Vaid's
directorship.
Two
of
its
early
reports
model
how
queer
of
color
activism
troubled
whiteness
and
national
inclusion
as
premises
of
sexual
minority
politics.
NGLTF's
survey
of
black
pride,
Say
It
Loud,
I'm
Black
and
Proud
(2000),
portrayed
the
distance
from
white
queer
politics
felt
by
black
pride
participants
as
a
reflection
of
their
primary
efforts
to
get
black
communities
to
embrace
differences
and
address
social
and
political
issues
of
common
concern.
Rafael
Diaz
and
George
Ayala's
Social
Discrimination
and
Health:
The
Case
of
Latino
Gay
Men
and
HIV
Risk
(2000)
argued
that
homophobia,
racism,
and
antiimmigrant
backlash
must
be
addressed
as
social
determinants
of
health
among
Latino
gay
men.
In
both
reports,
researchers
stressed
that
the
wellbeing
and
survival
of
queer
people
required
jettisoning
"inclusion"
as
the
narrative
of
sexual
politics
and
organizing
instead
from
the
distinct
needs
of
queers
of
color
within
communities
of
color.
Such
work
reflects
theories
among
Native
queer
activists
about
the
conditioning
of
sexuality
and
gender
by
national,
racial,
and
economic
power,
yet
it
still
falls
short
of
recognizing
settler
colonialism
as
a

150
condition
of
all
these
processes.
The
institute's
reports
on
racism
and
immigration
never
addressed
indigeneity
or
decolonization.

Although
it
lacked
any
similar
organization
to
support
Native
queer
activist
research,
such
issues
were
addressed
in
Native
AIDS
organizing.
For
instance,
Gilbert
Deschamps
(Ojibwe)
assembled
material
on
the
colonial
histories
and
anticolonial
resistance
of
Two-Spirit
people
in
We
Are
Part
of
a
Tradition
for
the
Toronto
AIDS
organization
2-Spirits.
University
of
Washington
Professor
Karina
Walters
(Choctaw)
drew
National
Institutes
of
Health
(NIH)
funding
for
the
Honor
Project,
an
Indigenous
research
project
examining
gender,
sexuality,
and
HIV
risk
for
Two-Spirit
people.
These
and
many
other
works
traced
Native
queer
people's
political
traditions
and
struggles
for
decolonization.
In
principle,
they
could
align
with
the
antiracist
activist
scholarship
of
queers
of
color,
but
in
the
1990s,
in
the
absence
of
any
questioning
of
incorporation
into
the
power
of
a
settler
state,
these
links
did
not
form
within
the
NGLTF.
The
NGLTF
policy
institute
produced
some
of
the
best
work
to
emerge
from
antiracist
queer
politics
in
its
era.
But
without
a
critique
of
settler
colonialism
that
could
address
the
needs
of
Native
queer
activists,
its
work
naturalized
the
settler
state
as
a
horizon
of
queer
freedom.

Later
in
this
chapter
I
explore
how
non-Native
queer
politics
could
shift
in
response
to
this
legacy,
but
first
I
discuss
how
U.S.
queer
activists
engaged
liberal
settler
multiculturalism
in
the
1990s
by
naturalizing
their
diversity
in
response
to
neoliberal
post-civil
rights
politics,
in
a
way
that
still
persists
today
in
homonormative
and
progressive
antiracist
queer
politics.
An
ethnographic
study
of
social
practices
demonstrated
to
me
that
the
normalization
of
whiteness
in
queer
multiculturalism
was
disrupted
by
the
antiracist
work
of
queers
of
color,
but
so
long
as
that
occurred
within
the
framework
of
state
responsibility
to
a
"public,"
the
settler
colonial
context
of
civic
battles
over
race
and
sexuality
and
of
queer
projects
remained
undisturbed.
I
ask
now

151
what
goes
missing
in
queer
radicalism
when
the
settler
colonial
conditions
of
racial
and
sexual
power
are
naturalized,
even
as
a
new
homonormative
politics
reinforces
neoliberal
agendas
and
further
naturalizes
settler
citizenship.

Queer
Multiracialism
and
Post-Civil
Rights
Politics

During
the
1990s,
from
my
base
in
Santa
Cruz
County,
I
participated
in
San
Francisco
Bay
Area
queer
activism
that
took
place
at
a
distance
from
Native
queer
politics.
Their
deliberations
over
the
racial
composition
and
stakes
of
queer
politics
were
mediated
by
a
discourse
on
culture
in
which
white
queer
politics
engaged
"race"
by
articulating
liberal
multiculturalism
in
two
ways.
First,
white
queers
sought
to
perform
antiracism
by
announcing
queer
racial
diversity,
but
establishing
the
commonalities
to
link
them
reestablished
whiteness
at
their
center.
Second,
white
queer
progressives
adapted
antiracism
by
presenting
themselves
as
a
form
of
diversity
analogous
to
race,
yet,
in
so
doing,
they
displaced
queers
of
color
and
set
up
a
conflict
over
the
putative
"diversity"
of
whiteness.
Alliances
led
by
queer
activists
of
color
challenged
queer
appeals
to
cultural
authenticity
and
multiracial
inclusion
and
modeled
alternative
forms
of
queer
and
antiracist
activism.
But
the
conjuncture
of
queer
politics
of
"race"
and
culture
with
post-civil
rights
shifts
in
the
terms
of
state
recognition
produced
political
conundrums
that
illuminated
their
conditioning
by
the
settler
state.

Queer
politics
in
Santa
Cruz
County
was
shaped
by
the
regional
social
geography
of
transnational
labor
migration
in
the
information
technology,
agricultural,
and
service
industries
and
in
higher
education.
A
white/
Anglo
majority
and
Chicano/Latino
minority
defined
this
region,
along
with
much
smaller
African
American
and
Asian
American
communities,
alongside
the
Ohlone
Costanoan
tribes
who
asserted
their
survival
against
erasure
by
the
legacies
of
the
Spanish
missions
and
Anglo
conquest.
This
largely
rural
region

152
of
small
cities
was
defined
by
the
contrast
between
the
Santa
Cruz
city
region
of
"North
County"
and
the
"South
County"
region
around
the
city
of
Watsonville.
The
counterculturist
reputation
of
Santa
Cruz
was
belied
by
its
white
middle-class
majority
that
included
generations
of
University
of
California
graduates
and
Silicon
Valley
homeowners.
South
County's
working-class
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
communities
remained
defined
by
white/Anglo
agricultural
businessmen
with
minority
political
power
as
well
as
their
role
as
a
historical
epicenter
of
radical
activism
in
the
United
Farm
Workers
and
Chicano/a
arts
movement.
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
queer
networks
existed,
but
rarely
achieved
leadership
in
white,
middle-class
North
County
institutions
that
assumed
the
role
of
representing
queer
Santa
Cruz.
North
County
queer
politics
also
split
between
a
downtown
community
center
and
student
organizing
at
the
University
of
California
campus,
where
the
racialization
of
regional
queer
activism
was
marked
by
queer
students
of
color
who
organized
separately.
I
offer
an
account
of
activism
in
the
North
County
region,
where
I
lived,
worked,
and
studied
during
the
1990s,
to
trace
how
normative
modes
of
racializing
queer
politics
powerfully
shaped
this
region
and
transformed
over
time.

Queer
Whiteness
and
the
Question
of
Culture

Long
before
my
research
began,
I
encountered
Santa
Cruz
queer
politics
through
public
education
on
its
racial
formation,
at
a
time
when
critiquing
racism
marked
whiteness
in
local
queer
politics.
While
strolling
downtown
one
morning
in
1991,
soon
after
moving
to
Santa
Cruz,
my
eye
suddenly
was
caught
by
a
flyer
on
a
telephone
pole
with
a
large
portrait
of
a
pale,
conventionally
handsome
young
man,
lips
parted
and
brow
tensed,
next
to
a
text
that
said,
"As
a
member
of
the
gay
community,
I
am
affected
by
racism
everyday."
Bemused,
I
scanned
the
text
and
moved
on,
only
to
see
a
series
of
such
posters,
each
offering
critique
of
racism
by
people
presenting
as
white

153
lesbians
or
gay
men.
I
later
learned
that
these
were
the
work
of
local
art
activists
Brian
Hull
and
Robin
White.
In
Going
Public:
A
Folk
Art
Project,
White
photographed
fifteen
area
residents
who
identified
as
white
members
of
queer
communities
and
Hull
edited
their
thoughts
on
racism
as
public
statements.

This
campaign
was
a
response
to
struggles
over
racism
at
the
Santa
Cruz
Lesbian,
Gay,
Bisexual,
and
Transgender
Community
Center.
Founded
in
1988
as
the
Lesbian
and
Gay
Community
Center,
the
organization
changed
its
name
in
1989.
Demands
by
activists
of
color
had
led
the
new
center
to
invite
people
of
color
onto
its
board,
and
during
its
first
year
the
center
was
shaken
by
conflict
over
racism.
This
conflict
was
recalled
in
a
local
LGBT
news
magazine
by
Brian
Tate
Anderson-known
locally
as
Gryphon
Blackswan-a
black
gay
critic
of
queer
politics
who
commented
on
his
participation
in
a
recent
antiracism
workshop:

I
learned
the
workshop
had
arisen
from
the
Lesbian/Gay
Community
Center's
failed
efforts
to
diversify
its
board.
In
a
fast
forward
replay
of
the
saga
of
affirmative
action
in
corporate
America,
recruitment
succeeded
admirably
followed
by
disaster.
As
the
new
colored
folk
tried
to
make
real
the
welcome
they
were
extended,
they
ran
into
depressingly
familiar
difficulties
and
eventually
resigned.
A
common
exit
comment
was
their
belief
that
the
board
needed
to
address
its
own
racism.
The
surprise
is,
they
did!
The
workshops
were
a
direct
outgrowth
of
that
process.14

In
the
same
issue,
Hull
and
White
explained
that
their
project
responded
to
the
workshops
with
a
white
antiracist
effort
to
"go
public"
with
calls
for
change
in
queer
communities.
Hull
praised
how
"the
posters
got
people
talking
and
thinking"
and
"transformed
the
landscape
I
live
in
...
Seeing
them
made
it
a
little
easier
to
breathe.""
Yet,
he
admitted
that
the
project's

154
introspective
nature
left
open
the
question
of
how
it
would
create
change.
Hull
named
this
among
the
things
he
"didn't
like
about
this
project":

(a)
There
was
little
context
for
most
of
the
people
who
read
the
posters
on
the
street.
I
imagined
some
people
thinking,
"Just
who
are
all
these
white
people
talking
about
And
why
are
there
only
white
people,
anyway%"
(b)
The
project
did
not
in
any
way
work
to
make
basic
needs
(housing,
literacy,
health
care,
employment)
more
accessible
and
abundant.
At
some
point
the
posters
felt
frivolous.
One
could
think,
"When
are
they
going
to
stop
talking
about
it
and
actually
do
something%"
(c)
The
posters
were
ripped
down
at
an
alarming
rate.

The
posters
apparently
elicited
both
racist
and
homophobic
responses
from
some
viewers.
Hull
admits
that
the
focus
on
white
queer
self-reflection
had
been
removed
from
a
local
context
of
struggles
at
the
community
center
and
accountability
to
queers
of
color,
given
that
white
speakers
appeared
to
discuss
racism
only
among
themselves.
He
also
wonders
if
talk
about
racism
lets
white
people
off
the
hook
of
actually
"doing
something."
His
words
may
be
a
criticism
of
the
popularity
of
diversity
trainings
as
a
bureaucratic
response
to
racism.
While
his
argument
is
sensitive
to
structural
inequalities,
it
also
invites
a
transformation
of
consciousness
among
white
queers
that
could
lead
to
new
politics.
Although
the
artists
created
this
project
to
promote
antiracism,
I
regard
it
as
a
textual
reflection
on
queer
whiteness
that
its
narrators
variously
contest
and
reinscribe.

The
narrator
of
the
poster
"The
Women
Left
Angry
and
Most
Likely
Disgusted
With
Us"
reflects
on
the
founding
of
Santa
Cruz
Queer
Nation,
where
those
gathered
faced
a
critique
of
their
race
and
class
formation
and
their
incapacity
to
engage
it.
The
narrative
reads:

At
the
first
ever
QUEER
NATION
meeting
in
Santa
Cruz
there
was
a

155
 proposal
to
have
our
first
action
at
the
Boardwalk.
As
I
recall,
the
idea
was
that
we
would
march
down
there
as
a
group
and
do
a
kiss-in
or
whatever.
At
that
point,
two
Chicana
women
raised
their
hands
and
said
if
we
were
going
to
march
down
to
the
Boardwalk,
they
wanted
to
know
what
we,
as
a
mostly
white
group,
were
going
to
do
about
the
tension
we
would
cause
marching
through
a
predominantly
Hispanic
community.
How
were
we
going
to
address
the
issues
of
concern
in
that
community,
such
as
AIDS,
outreach
to
Hispanic
gays,
racism,
etc.
Well,
the
response
of
the
group
was
to
not
respond
at
all.
No
one
in
the
room
addressed
their
concerns
and
the
discussion
continued
as
if
the
two
women
had
not
spoken
at
all.
The
women
left
angry
and
most
likely
disgusted
with
us."

The
speakers
invoked
by
the
narrator
arrive
as
potential
participants
to
invite
a
multiracial,
cross-class
queer
politics
under
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
leadership.
Yet
they
leave
after
the
group
fails
to
recognize
why
queer
activism
in
Beach
Flats
must
engage
the
community's
concerns.
The
narrator
implies
that
whiteness
so
defined
Queer
Nation's
radicalism
as
to
make
the
group
incapable
of
a
response.
Of
course,
calling
the
group
"mostly
white"
indicates
that
this
testimony
cannot
speak
for
other
queers
of
color
in
the
room.
Was
their
silence
a
critical
witnessing
of
whiteness
in
this
space?
Did
they
also
leave
after
the
women
spoke,
unnoticed
by
the
narrator?
These
questions
are
left
unanswered
by
the
poster,
as
the
narrator's
and
editors'
efforts
to
focus
on
white
racism
necessarily
occlude
the
more
complex
racialization
of
Queer
Nation.
The
narrator's
intention
"to
combat
and
resist
racism
in
my
gay
community"
models
the
project's
purpose
to
turn
reflection
into
antiracist
action.
Yet
even
this
statement
asserts
a
relationship
to
community
that
potentially
leaves
open
a
problem
raised
by
the
speakers
at
Queer
Nation:
that
proposing
or
desiring
an
inclusive
queer
community
belies
the
fact
that
right
now,
multiple
and
divergent
communities
exist.
Here
I
want
to
affirm
the
narrator's
use
of
"my"
as
meaningful.
With
a
Chicano/a
and

156
Latino/a
queer
community
in
the
next
neighborhood,
perhaps
the
narrator's
"gay
community"
never
was
inclusive
but
rather
was
based
on
whiteness.
If
it
conflates
its
formation
with
queerness,
then
doing
antiracism
in
that
space
could
simply
give
it
new
opportunities
to
assert
itself
as
a
necessary
center
of
queer
politics.
What,
then,
would
happen
to
the
claim
of
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
queers
from
another
community
that
self-reflection
should
lead
to
relationships
across
differences?
What
if
white
queers
displacing
their
hegemony
are
not
to
be
antiracist
in
a
queer
domain,
but
antiracist
in
all
white-supremacist
domains:
representing
no
longer
a
marginality
that
includes
race
difference,
but
a
specific
and
powerful
location
within
ongoing
relations
of
racism?

Going
Public:
A
Folk
Art
Project
(11
of
15).
Courtesy
of
Robin
White
and
Bryan
Hull.

Compared
to
the
tone
of
this
poster,
the
first
one
I
saw
in
Santa
Cruz'As
a
member
of
the
gay
community,
I
am
affected
by
racism

157
everyday"optimistically
portrays
white
queer
antiracism
as
a
force
for
change.
Yet
its
route
to
white
antiracism
also
reflects
certain
qualities
of
queer
whiteness
by
presuming
that
a
shared
queer
culture
undergirds
and
will
be
fulfilled
by
including
differences.
The
poster
text
reads:

By
creating
a
lack
of
communication
and
interaction,
racism
divides
my
community.
Racism
hinders
us
from
moving
forth
on
political
issues.
If
the
groups
in
my
community
could
interact
and
communicate
with
each
other,
we
could
strive
for
liberation.
With
a
strong
coalition
comes
solidarity;
with
solidarity
comes
power."

This
testimony
succinctly
portrays
two
distinct
yet
ultimately
compatible
accounts
of
race
and
queerness:
imagining
them
apart,
analogically;
or
imagining
all
differences
of
race
to
be
incorporated
by
queerness.
The
narrator
opens
by
arguing
that
an
extant
group,
the
gay
community,
carries
an
inclusive
integrity
only
secondarily
troubled
by
racism.
But
his
next
claims
define
community
only
in
the
terms
of
distinct
(racialized?)
groups
lacking
unity.
His
last
claim
suggests
resolution
if
various
groups
appeal
to
solidar
ity.
Here
his
words
reflect
a
paradox
in
normatively
white
queer
politics:
despite
being
motivated
by
ideals
of
inclusion,
only
disparate
groups
appear
to
exist
amid
an
unrealized
imaginary
of
unity.
Calling
for
solidarity
might
seem
useful
to
create
change,
but
even
this
rests
on
a
desire
to
believe
that
"my
community"
possesses
a
multiracial
integrity
that
racism
only
interrupts.
Here,
even
alliance
work
among
white
queers
and
queers
of
color
can
sustain
a
belief
that
its
purpose
is
to
become
not
many
but
"one."
This
resolution
of
queer
racism
would
grant
antiracist
white
queers
a
return
to
desired
"community,"
rather
than
ask
how
racialization
conditions
their
enduring
interest
to
discover
"one."

The
narrator
marks
the
discursive
and
institutional
contexts
of
white
queer
antiracism
by
examining
racism
on
a
"covert"
level.
He
says
narratives
such
as

158
the
myth
of
Columbus
discovering
America"
("It
is
still
being
taught")
mean
that
most
people
don't
even
realize
they
are
racist."
Here,
his
self-reflexive
and
social
analysis
shifts
racism
from
prejudice
to
a
normalization
of
white
culture.
But
he
also
situates
racism
and
antiracism
within
the
horizon
of
a
white
settler
society.
Referring
to
Columbus's
discovery
as
a
"myth"
recognizes
that
the
logic
of
elimination
proposes
that
Europeans
arrive
on
empty
land
(terra
nullius)
and
justifies
erasing
and
replacing
Native
peoples.
Yet
framing
this
as
"racism"
also
naturalizes
the
settler
state
and
its
society
as
the
contexts
to
address
it
(presumably,
by
being
"antiracist")
while
"race"
displaces
"nation"
as
an
analytics
through
which
this
power
can
be
contested.
To
do
that
would
require
the
narrator
marking
himself
not
only
as
white,
and
racist,
but
also
as
a
non-Native
inheritor
of
settler
colonization
who
participates
in
state
agendas
to
settle
Native
lands,
control
Native
peoples,
and
eliminate
Native
nationality
a s
a
difference
that
can
disrupt
settler
rule.
Liberal
settler
multiculturalism
repositions
conflicts
over
nationality
as
"race"
to
protect
the
settler
state
from
critique.
My
point
is
not
that
critiquing
racism
is
in
competition
with
critiquing
settler
colonialism.
Rather,
white
supremacy
and
settler
colonialism
are
interdependent
and
must
be
theorized
together,
particularly
if
settler
states
define
"race"-including,
through
antiracism-to
occlude
an
illegitimacy
that
would
be
exposed
by
assertions
of
Indigenous
nationality.

My
reading
of
Going
Public
suggests
that
white
queer
antiracist
narratives
elicited
deeper
issues
in
need
of
critique
if
white
queer
antiracism
is
to
proceed:
namely,
white
queer
desires
to
resolve
racism
by
reasserting
that
queerness
is
an
integral,
if
diverse,
social
or
cultural
group;
and
naturalizing
the
horizon
of
the
white
settler
state
and
its
liberal
multiculturalism
as
the
context
in
which
queers
resolve
conflict
over
difference.
I
now
turn
to
cases
that
arose
after
Going
Public,
in
which
queer
responses
to
liberal
multiculturalism
newly
marked
their
racialization
for
critique.

159
Queer
Diversity
and
Queer
of
Color
Mobilizations

Topics
raised
by
Going
Public
continued
in
the
1990s
in
debates
about
the
racial
formation
of
Santa
Cruz
queer
politics
in
the
context
of
"the
community
center."
The
downtown
LGBT
Community
Center
was
soon
joined
by
a
new
institution
for
queer
students
at
the
nearby
university.
Each
center
discussed
the
racialization
of
queer
culture
and
politics
against
the
backdrop
of
state
recognition.
Yet
queer
subjects
of
"race"
in
Santa
Cruz
were
narrated
not
as
subjects
of
the
state
but
as
part
of
a
queer
"community,"
and
especially
in
relationship
to
its
"center."
Heeding
Miranda
Joseph's
call
to
question
the
romance
of
community"
as
deferring
critique
of
the
production
of
queers
for
state
and
economic
management,
I
ask
how
institutionalizing
queer
"community"
articulated
"race"
within
the
horizon
of
liberal
multiculturalism.18
Like
Joseph,
my
ethnographic
stories
note
how
creative
work
marked
contradictions
in
communities.The
compatibility
of
queer
multiracialism
with
whiteness
was
displaced
by
queers
of
color
who
allied
in
pursuit
of
what
I
call
a
"decentering"
politics,
which
also
reflected
work
by
queers
of
color
across
the
United
States.19
The
contrast
in
their
methods
reached
a
flash
point
in
1999-2000
during
a
neoliberal
backlash
against
queer
and
antiracist
appeals
to
the
state,
in
the
form
of
California
Propositions
21
and
22
(discussed
later
in
this
chapter).
This
crisis
exposed
limits
in
each
project's
capacity
to
critique
the
power
confronting
them.

(DE)CENTERING
COMMUNITY

After
years
of
student
activism,
the
first
state-funded
LGBT
Student
Resource
Center
was
formed
at
the
university
campus
in
1994,
a
sign
of
state
recognition
of
LGBT
people
as
a
social
minority
deserving
antidiscrimination
and
institutional
support.
This
located
them
within
a
logic
formerly
based
on
race,
as
university
support
for
minority
groups
had
previously
funded
only
the
Ethnic
Student
Resource
Centers
for
African
American,
Chicano/a
and

160
Latino/a,
Asian
American,
and
Native
American
students,
with
the
last
group
defined
as
an
ethnic
minority
rather
than
as
constituting
a
multiplicity
of
national
differences.
The
granting
of
a
resource
center
indicated
that
queer
students
had
"arrived"
as
legitimate
participants
in
public
education
through
a
multicultural
logic
of
racial
analogy.
Yet,
granting
this
to
the
predominantly
white
networks
that
had
organized
queer
activism
positioned
them
as
an
equivalent
to
communities
of
color,
which
occluded
the
ongoing
efforts
of
queer
students
of
color
in
the
Ethnic
Student
Resource
Centers
and
the
LGBT
center
to
offer
alternatives
to
white
queer
narratives
of
queer
multiracialism.

In
1995,
students
responded
by
forming
a
new
affinity
group,
Queers
of
Color,
which
formed
ties
with
the
Ethnic
Student
Resource
Center
directors
and
with
faculty
of
color
whom
they
invited
to
be
allies.
Queers
of
Color
extended
its
organizing
to
the
many
locations
where
students
of
color
gathered,
including
off-campus
networks
with
regional
youth.
Queers
of
Color
used
the
LGBT
center
to
do
this
initial
work,
but
on
a
path
that
did
not
conform
to
and
went
beyond
the
center's
scope.
The
center
celebrated
its
first
African
American
History
Month
in
2000
by
documenting
black
queer
history
and
addressing
racism
in
queer
communities.
New
educational
activism
in
queer,
racial/ethnic,
and
feminist
spaces
on
campus
analyzed
intersectionality
and
multiple
identities,
including
in
a
discussion
series,
"Intersections
of
Oppressions,"
on
such
topics
as
"racism
and
homophobia"
and
"white
privilege."
Queers
of
Color
members
also
took
these
messages
to
system-wide
programs
for
students
of
color
where
they
challenged
heterosexism
within
antiracism.

Queers
of
Color
also
questioned
the
ways
whiteness
permeated
the
languages,
networks,
and
politics
of
queer
identities
at
the
center.
During
spring
2000,
a
longtime
Queers
of
Color
organizer
and
I
reflected
on

161
institutional
memory
while
standing
in
the
center's
lounge
surveying
decorations
recently
hung
for
the
center's
first
Asian
Islander
History
Month.
"I
wish
there
could
be
images
of
queers
of
color
up
all
year
round,"
he
said,
his
eyes
glancing
at
the
LGBT
social-service
posters
and
magazines
around
us
depicting
athletic
young
white
men
and
women.
I
recalled
a
winter
morning
that
year
when
I
noted
that
a
wall
of
the
center
recently
covered
with
photographs,
posters,
and
commentaries
on
black
queer
history
had
been
replaced
at
the
end
of
Black
History
Month
with
three
paintings
of
abstracted
pink
female
and
male
nudes.
More
than
a
desire
for
"representation,"
I
understood
his
comment
and
my
recollections
as
a
recognition
that
normative
whiteness
still
informed
both
the
center's
"everyday"
practices
and
recent
efforts
through
representation
to
achieve
"inclusion"
by
portraying
queers
of
color
amid
the
continuation
of
unmarked
norms.

The
normativity
of
queer
"inclusion"
was
evoked
by
a
project
that
culminated
the
center's
efforts
to
embrace
racial/ethnic
diversity:
the
creation
by
students
and
staff
of
a
mural
on
the
exterior
of
the
center
building.
Titled
"lesbian
gay
bisexual
transgender
queer
allies,"
the
mural's
rectangular
border
states
"welcome"
in
a
number
of
languages-including
those
requested
by
some
student
members
as
their
native
languages-while
a
rainbow
flag
floats
behind
human
silhouettes
colored
gray
to
beige
dancing
in
a
circle.
The
links
among
the
figures
vary,
as
one's
hand
melds
with
the
next,
while
a
third
does
not
touch
the
fourth.
Thus,
together
the
many
images
mark
forms
of
difference
in
proximity,
language,
and
color;
but
they
simultaneously
appear
as
variations
on
a
larger,
linking
principle.
Students
of
color
at
the
center
helped
conceive
and
produce
the
mural,
and
many
remarked
to
me
their
sense
that
redefining
the
center
as
a
multiracial
and
multicultural
space
gave
them
pleasure,
relief,
and
a
desire
for
renewed
activism.
Nevertheless,
representation
of
queers
of
color
as
diversifying
elements
at
the
LGBT
center
was
not
identical
to
the
historical
work
of
Queers
of
Color
to
make
it
a
node
within
broader
work.

162
The
group's
formation
at
that
center
was
important,
in
that,
unlike
the
separated
Ethnic
Student
Resource
Center,
students
of
color
could
argue
that
all
their
racial
and
national
identities
were
recognizable
here,
as
was
their
queerness.
Nevertheless,
after
years
of
work
making
them
equally
visible
in
the
Ethnic
Student
Resource
Centers
and
as
a
distinct
group,
Queers
of
Color
decentered
the
LGBT
center
as
an
origin
of
their
work
and
its
projects
of
"inclusion"
to
position
them
within
its
domain.
They
actively
utilized
the
LGBT
center
as
a
space
with
multiple
entries
and
exits,
but
not
one
that
contained
all
that
they
were.
In
this
sense,
Queers
of
Color
did
not
represent
queer
"diversity"
because
they
challenged
the
notion
that
their
differences
could
or
should
appear
first
as
diversifying
evidence
of
some
more
fundamental,
and
inclusive,
principle.
Visually,
decentering
models
might
take
many
forms,
but
they
likely
would
trouble
the
image
of
a
circle
dance.
Queers
of
Color
in
fact
succeeded
in
the
1990s
in
marking
the
normatively
white
"culture"
of
queer
multiracialism
by
promoting
a
discrepant
multiracialism
in
their
decentered
and
decentering
alliance
politics.

CENTERING
"DIVERSITY"

Racism
and
whiteness
already
represented
historical
concerns
of
the
downtown
Santa
Cruz
LGBT
Community
Center.
Its
conflict
over
race
posed
an
unresolved
legacy
for
the
volunteer
organization.
With
a
potentially
multiracial
constituency,
yet
no
affinity
group
for
people
of
color,
the
center's
leadership,
volunteer
base,
and
facilitators
remained
predominantly-and,
in
some
cases,
entirely-white.
During
my
participation
in
the
center
from
1994
to
1998,
whiteness
remained
a
problem
that
leaders
sought
to
solve
by
learning
how
to
serve
and
represent
the
multiracial
scope
of
regional
communities.
Efforts
included
inviting
volunteers
to
attend
antiracism
training,
ensuring
that
the
annual
pride
celebration
contained
Spanishlanguage
translation
of
its
program,
and
publication
in
its
newspaper

163
o f
a
bilingual
edition
with
columns
in
Spanish
that
were
distributed
across
South
and
North
counties.
These
efforts
produced
some
new
ties,
particularly
after
a
South
County
Latino
gay
men's
group
advertised
with
the
center.
But
the
efforts
all
took
place
within
a
social
geography
that
separated
South
County
by
twenty
miles
from
the
predominantly
white
queer
networks
of
North
County,
where
even
sustained
self-reflexive
critiques
of
their
own
homogeneity
did
not
substantially
alter
the
situation.

Years
of
work
on
a
shoestring
budget
left
the
center
in
1999
facing
the
possibility
of
having
to
close,
and
the
directors
sent
out
a
call
in
local
LGBT
media
for
assistance
in
the
crisis.
After
a
meeting
drew
a
host
of
volunteers,
a
new
board
of
directors
convened
and
sought
to
save
the
center
through
reorganization.
The
board
now
included
a
larger
proportion
of
white
gay
businessmen,
a
constituency
that
had
been
less
evident
in
the
previous
decade
of
grassroots
activism
led
by
radical
dykes
and
bi
and
transwomen
as
well
as
queer-identified
gay
men.
The
new
cochairs
worked
in
the
Silicon
Valley
information
technology
industries,
and
one
had
previously
helped
organize
another
regional
group,
Hi-Tech
Gays.
The
board's
combined
agenda
of
fiscal
responsibility
and
growth
included
seeking
corporate
and
foundation
funds
to
re-create
the
center
as
a
nonprofit
leader
in
regional
politics
and
social
services.
The
board
also
immediately
determined
that
its
plans
for
growth
would
be
aided
by
taking
a
new
name,
The
Diversity
Center.
While
the
older
mission
was
retained-as
was
the
subtitle,
"The
LGBT
Community
Center
of
Santa
Cruz
new
branding
presented
"diversity"
as
the
key
contribution
that
the
center
and
its
constituents
would
advertise
to
the
public
they
wished
to
inform
while
gaining
financial
security
and
civic
recognition.

The
most
immediate
result
of
this
change
was
a
rejuvenation
of
the
center's
activities.
The
previously
underutilized
center
offices
now
teemed
with
life,
as
rare
open
hours
burgeoned
into
a
seven-day
schedule
accommodating
a

164
plethora
of
new
affinity
groups,
including
a
men's
group,
a
women's
group,
game
night,
film
night,
women's
film
afternoon,
coming
out
group,
and
two
transgender
and
trans-allied
groups.
By
the
time
of
the
center's
first
annual
report
in
2000,
the
new
board
touted
new
activities
alongside
fulfillment
of
all
its
former
duties,
while
active
fund-raising
was
keeping
cash
flow
for
the
first
time
in
four
digits
and
had
raised
trust
money
to
almost
fifteen
thousand
dollars.''-0
Thus,
despite
the
seeming
backgrounding
of
the
center's
constituents
in
the
subtitle
of
the
new
name,
the
center
appeared
not
only
to
have
increased
participation
by
its
various
constituents
but
also
to
have
gained
more
institutional
staying
power
than
ever
before.

This
very
"success"
led
the
board
to
confront
unfinished
business,
as
its
annual
report
announced
a
decision
to
form
its
newest
committee:
Diversity
Outreach.
The
board
noted
that
both
it
and
the
many
groups
now
using
the
center
were
predominantly
or
entirely
white,
and
it
asked
why
more
people
of
color
were
not
coming
to
the
revitalized
center.
It
reflected
on
the
possibility
that
its
identity
named
a
contradiction:
promoting
LGBT
people
as
"diversity"
insufficiently
names
the
"diversity"
the
board
wished
to
present.
Amid
the
popularization
of
"diversity"
as
multiculturalism's
object,
the
reference
to
sexuality
or
gender
remained
conditioned
by
making
queers
analogous
to
racial/ethnic
minorities."
If
queer
"diversity"
was
claimed
by
whites
with
no
history
of
antiracism,
it
effectively
used
a
logic
suggestive
of
racial
minoritization
to
occlude
their
whiteness
so
they
would
be
viewed
only
in
terms
of
their
oppression
as
queers.
The
Diversity
Outreach
committee
acknowledged
that
this
ruse
had
been
exposed,
albeit
by
the
very
normative
logic
that
it
embraced.
In
this
year
when
Queers
of
Color
energized
university
activism,
the
downtown
center
board
invited
one
of
the
group's
members
to
chair
Diversity
Outreach.
This
recognition
of
local
leadership
also
served
as
a
reminder
that
members
of
Queers
of
Color
had
not
worked
at
the
downtown
center
until
they
were
hired
to
address
its
"diversity."
The
committee
gained

165
foundation
funds
to
support
diversity
programs,
specifically
antiracism
training
for
the
board
by
diversity
training
professionals.
Few
others
were
privy
to
the
event,
but
stories
circulated
afterwards
that
recalled
the
event
that
had
first
split
the
center
board
a
decade
earlier.
The
training
appears
to
have
been
taken
seriously
by
this
predominantly
white
group,
even
as
board
members
of
color
questioned
the
manner
in
which
race
and
racism
were
presented
by
the
trainers.
But
without
a
mandate
to
carry
this
event
forward,
the
Diversity
Outreach
coordinator
stayed
on
to
gather
resources
on
antiracism
for
the
center
library
before
departing,
and
the
committee
itself
disbanded.

My
story
now
turns
to
a
moment
when
political
configurations
revealed
their
limits-in
struggles
over
sexuality
and
race
around
Propositions
21
and
22.
These
voter-initiated
electoral
propositions
elicited
a
post-civil
rights
political
struggle
over
conflicting
narratives
of
queerness
and
"race"
in
each
center.

NEGOTIATING
ALLIANCE

In
winter
2000,
Californians
faced
two
ballot
propositions
that
purported
to
protect
the
individual
liberty
of
citizens
from
the
violent
insurgence
or
special
rights
of
racialized
and
sexualized
subjects.
Proposition
21,
a
"toughon-crime"
law,
would
expand
state
power
to
try
teenagers
as
adults
by
criminalizing
"gang"-associated
dress
styles
and
graffiti
while
opening
youth
so
profiled
to
charges
of
life
imprisonment
under
the
California
"three
strikes"
law.
Proposition
22
would
amend
the
state
constitution
to
define
marriage
as
a
union
between
a
man
and
woman.
Together,
the
initiatives
reflected
the
neoliberalism
of
a
post-civil
rights
era
in
which
the
state
must
protect
citizens
from
an
alleged
threat
by
insurgent
groups
empowered
by
stateapproved
multiculturalism.
Both
initiatives
defined
white
heteronormative
citizenship,
by
assigning
hypermasculine
violence
to
youth
of
color,
men
and
women,
with
overtones
of
nativism
if
"gangs"
were
linked
to
migration;
and
by
inviting

166
communities
of
color
to
perceive
same-sex
marriage
as
an
agenda
of
wealthy
whites
using
race
and
class
privilege
to
incite
perversion.

This
racialization
and
sexualization
of
political
debate
highlighted
tensions
in
Santa
Cruz
queer
politics.
At
the
Diversity
Center,
study
of
diversity
was
eclipsed
by
responding
to
Proposition
22.
An
ad
hoc
group
of
local
activists,
including
former
city
politicians
and
center
organizers,
initiated
a
regional
campaign
to
oppose
22.
Their
calls
for
fund-raising
and
proposals
of
organizing
strategies-house
parties,
phone
banks,
Democratic
Party
door
hangers
on
election
day-demonstrated
their
political
experience.
At
the
first
two
meetings
at
the
Diversity
Center,
each
attendedby
one
to
two
dozen
volunteers,
the
initial
organizing
strategy
did
not
seriously
address
Proposition
21.
Organizers
did
remind
volunteers
that
22
was
not
the
only
hateful
item
on
the
ballot
and
that
they
should
encourage
opposition
to
21,
But
the
phone-
banking
script
suggested
discussing
21
if
time
allowed
and
if
doing
so
did
not
jeopardize
opposition
to
22.
This
circumvented
the
racialization
of
both
propositions,
as
became
clear
at
the
first
meeting
when
a
tense
dialogue
on
tactics
led
one
organizer
to
cut
off
debate
by
interjecting,
We
are
not
going
to
do
outreach
to
South
County!"
I
thought
that
this
person,
as
a
South
County
resident
and
longtime
regional
activist,
might
be
referring
to
a
recent
struggle
when
the
county's
only
Latino
high-school
superintendent
resisted
a
challenge
to
antigay
harassment
of
South
County
students.
But
we
also
learned
at
the
meeting
that
the
Yes
on
22
committee
was
funding
a
growing
South
County
campaign
in
Latino/a
working-class
districts
through
door-to-door
voter
registration.
When
no
comparable
countereffort
was
proposed,
there
was
a
sense
of
resignation
among
those
present,
whom
I
perceived
to
be
white/Anglo
with
no
representatives
from
South
County
Latino/a
queer
networks.
In
this
case,
a
North
County
response
to
22
was
limited
to
a
white
queer
politics
that
consigned
working-class
Latinos/as
to
conservative
mobilization
by
focusing
on
rallying
the
white
middle-class
vote
in
defense
of

167
queer
rights.
This
looked
less
like
a
strategy
than
a
default
recognition
of
the
lack
of
relationships
among
white/Anglo
and
Latino/a
queers-even
in
South
County-despite
regional
legacies
of
white
queers
seeking
a
desired
multiracial
"community."
It
implied
a
perception
of
Latino/a
communities
as
irremedially
homophobic,
which
then
justified
white
queers
not
crossing
race/class
divides
and
returning
to
the
white
middle
class
as
the
proper
home
for
defending
their
nominally
multiracial
vision
of
queer
politics.

From
my
North
County
location
at
the
university,
I
joined
activists
to
reach
voters
countywide
with
messages
opposing
both
21
and
22.
The
earliest
student
coalition
explained
the
common
roots
of
21
and
22
as
a
conservative
backlash
against
marginalized
groups
by
legislating
Christian
Right
values
and
restricting
civil
liberties.
They
initially
framed
those
affected
by
21
and
22
as
separate-adult
same-sex
couples,
police-profiled
youthbut
linked
as
mutual
targets
of
backlash.
This
message
shifted
somewhat
once
the
student
coalition
was
joined
by
members
of
Queers
of
Color,
who
had
already
been
stressing
the
interdependence
of
race,
gender,
and
sexuality
in
queer
communities
and
communities
of
color.
One
event
reflecting
this
analysis
was
a
poetry
slam
to
raise
awareness
about
21
and
22,
sponsored
by
the
alliance
against
21/22
and
Queers
of
Color,
among
others.
The
event
drew
students
to
a
dining
hall
where,
encircled
by
an
array
of
campaign
tables,
an
audience
gathered
by
a
small
stage
for
a
spoken
word
event.
One
poet
read
a
set
of
poems
proclaiming
her
radically
queer
gender
and
her
black
feminist
consciousness.
Her
poems
invoked
how,
as
a
butch
boy
dyke
walking
in
public
with
a
girlfriend
she
might
never
be
able
to
marry,
she
already
knew
her
vulnerability
to
both
homophobic
violence
and
police
brutality
even
prior
to
Propositions
21
or
22.
Another
poet
evoked
antiAsian
racism
and
police
harassment
as
recurrent
experiences
that
questioned
his
sense
of
manhood.
Yet
he
then
decried
a
retreat
into
masculinist
posturing
in
defense
against
racist
and
state

168
violence,
which
would
hold
him
aloof
from
other
men
and
prevent
him
finding
the
empowerment
and
love
that
could
follow
queering
manhood.
As
artists
and
activists,
students
named
their
multiple
positionalities
as
targeted
for
control
by
hegemonic
culture
and
state
power,
and
offered
this
as
an
analysis
to
draw
the
audience
into
relationship
and
a
new
mobilization.
Their
work
complicated
the
model
of
fighting
21
and
22
as
distinct
issues
linked
through
coalition.
In
contrast,
by
embodying
intersections
that
even
"coalitions"
tend
to
imagine
as
separate,
queer
students
of
color
challenged
a
logic
of
analogy,
inclusion,
or
unity
that
would
absorb
their
differences
in
a
transformative
vision
of
political
action.

These
tantalizing
visions
of
another
kind
of
politics
were
not
taken
up
broadly
in
the
few
weeks
before
California
voters
approved
Propositions
21
and
22,
even
though
a
majority
in
Santa
Cruz
County
rejected
both.
In
a
moment
when
defining
queers
analogically
to
racial
minorities
secured
civic
participation
and
professionalization,
no
North
County
queer
politics
critiqued
how
racialization
and
sexualization
shaped
neoliberal
contestation
of
liberal
multiculturalism
apart
from
the
decentering
work
of
queers
of
color.
The
creators
of
Going
Public
had
admitted
that
they
lacked
a
public
context
to
reflect
and
mobilize
to
create
the
change
they
sought.
The
arrival
of
"diversity"
later
provided
a
context
by
eliding
whiteness
while
professionalizing
queers
as
"racial."
Queers
of
Color
responded
like
Policy
Institute
contributors
by
disturbing
beliefs
that
queers
share
a
culture
or
necessarily
cohere
as
a
diversified
whole.
Meanwhile,
white
middle-class
liberalism
at
the
downtown
center
racialized
Chicanos/as
and
Latinos/as
as
a
bloc
that
was
potentially
dangerous
to
queers,
after
a
decade
of
addressing
the
racism
that
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
queers
had
identified
by
offering
inclusion
as
a
solution.
Yet
the
Diversity
Center
did
shift
in
the
decade
following
these
events,
as
its
accountability
to
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
queer
organizations
drew
on
their
leadership:
from
the
group
Conexiones
hosting

169
events
in
South
County
and
North
County,
including
the
first
linguistically
accessible
Transgender
Day
of
Remembrance
in
Watsonville,"
to
an
alliance
with
Latinas
y
Lesbianas
y
Aliadas,
a
regional
group
that
in
2009
organized
the
first
Watsonville
Dyke
March.22
Moreover,
the
distinctive
work
of
Queers
of
Color
in
the
campus
center
gained
new
importance
after
its
2002
renaming
in
memory
of
Professor
Lionel
Cantu,
whose
scholarship
on
Mexican
queer
migrations
complicates
national,
economic,
racial,
gendered,
and
sexual
borders
and
invites
a
decentering
analysis
into
the
center's
work.23
Yet,
in
the
end,
to
locate
how
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
queers
engaged
these
events
within
analysis
of
"race"
elides
not
only
their
diverse
racial/ethnic
identities
but
also
their
complex
relationships
to
"nation."
The
transnationalism
of
migrant
and
immigrant
communities
intersects
the
history
of
Anglo
conquest
of
Mexico
that
racialized
mestizo
communities,
and
the
prior
and
ongoing
deployment
of
mestizaje
to
attempt
to
erase
the
Ohlone/Costanoan
peoples
on
whose
lands
these
struggles
took
place.
While
I
did
not
hear
indigeneity
raised
in
engagements
of
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
queers
with
the
Santa
Cruz
community
centers,
both
the
racialization
of
their
relation
to
indigeneity
and
its
possible
reclaiming
are
crucial
to
a
history
of
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
queer
politics,
and
bear
potential
to
center
both
nationality
and
indigeneity
in
queer
studies.

I
now
turn
to
queer
of
color
alliances
that
foregrounded
indigeneity
and
Native
queer
leadership
in
the
1990s
by
critiquing
liberal
multiculturalism
as
a
colonial
project
that
naturalizes
settlement.

Challenging
Settler
Multiculturalism:
Two-Spirit
Activism
and
Queer
of
Color
Alliances

Whether
northern
California
queer
activists
challenged
or
reproduced
whiteness,
their
struggles
resolved
by
debating
"race"
within
the
horizon
of
the
setter
state.
In
this
section,
I
cross
geographic
distances
to
ask
how
queer

170
activism
shifted
once
it
confronted
its
relationship
to
the
settler
state,
in
the
work
of
New
York
City's
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe.
From
its
founding
in
1989,
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
brought
together
Native
queer
people
to
challenge
settler
colonialism
and
defend
Native
peoples
within
pantribal
alliances.
The
group
drew
non-Native
queers
of
color
into
antiracist
queer
alliances
committed
to
Native
decolonization.
Their
work
showed
that
queer
politics
of
race,
culture,
or
citizenship
will
fail
to
explain
their
condition
unless
they
theorize
settler
colonialism,
as
Native
activists
did
by
challenging
liberal
multiculturalism
as
a
method
for
naturalizing
settlement.

WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
formed
at
a
time
of
growing
Native
queer
and
AIDS
activism
in
the
United
States
and
Canada.
Over
the
preceding
decade,
Gay
American
Indians
and
Living
the
Spirit
had
been
joined
by
a
proliferation
of
organizations
from
American
Indian
Gays
and
Lesbians
in
Minneapolis
(AIGL)
to
Gays
and
Lesbians
of
the
First
Nations
in
Toronto,
in
addition
to
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe.
In
1987,
Native
queer
activists
from
the
United
States
met
in
Washington,
D.C.,
for
the
March
for
Lesbian
and
Gay
Rights,
where
they
camped
on
the
Mall,
held
a
sunrise
ceremony
for
participants,
and
had
a
contingent
in
the
march.24
In
1988,
AIGL
brought
together
Native
GLBT
people
for
the
first
of
a
series
of
international
gatherings.
At
the
third
one,
in
Winnipeg
in
1990,
Two-Spirit
identity
was
defined.
Toronto
organizers
quickly
adapted
Two-Spirit
identity
by
renaming
themselves
2-Spirited
People
of
the
1st
Nations
(later,
2-Spirits)
and
also
committing
themselves
to
serve
Native
people
affected
by
HIV/AIDS.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
formed
in
1989
and
remained
active
into
the
1990s,
while
being
succeeded
later
in
the
decade
by
the
current
New
York
City
group,
North
East
Two-Spirit
Society.
Founded
by
Leota
Lone
Dog
(Lakota),
Curtis
Harris
(San
Carlos
Apache),
and
Ben
Geboe
(Yankton
Sioux),
the
group
benefited
from
the
experience
of
Harris
and
Nic
Billey
(Choctaw),
leaders
of
the
HIV/AIDS
Project
at
New
York
City's
American
Indian

171
Community
House
(AICH).25
In
early
writings,
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
thank
AICH
director
Rosemary
Richmond
for
her
unfailing
support
and
open
door
policy
here
at
the
Community
House."26

WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
presented
a
model
of
Two-Spirit
organizing
that
arose
prior
to
the
contemporary
definition
of
Two-Spirit
identity.
The
group
promoted
indigenist
identity
for
Native
queer
people
by
affirming
gender
and
sexual
diversity
in
their
nations
and
through
pantribal
ties,
as
indicated
by
the
group's
identification
with
two
historical
persons:
We'wha
and
Bar
Chee
Ampe.
A
flyer
announcing
the
group's
formation
explains
its
relationship
to
its
namesakes.
The
text
asserts
that
"We'wha
(1849-1896)
was
an
important
member
of
his
tribe,"
the
Zuni
nation,
for
having
the
"lhamana
status-an
individual
who
bridged
the
roles
of
women
and
men."
Quoting
colonial
observers,
it
states
that
We'wha
"has
been
described
as.
that
man
of
enormous
strength
who
lived
a
woman's
daily
life
in
woman's
dress,
but
remained
a
power
in
his
Pueblo's
gravest
councils."127
It
explains
that
We'wha
visited
Washington,
D.C.,
as
a
guest
of
Matilda
Coxe
Stevenson,
and
that
"he
demonstrated
weaving
at
the
Smithsonian
and
helped
Stevenson
document
Zuni
culture"
and
"called
on
Speaker
of
the
House
Jon
Carlisle
and
President
Grover
Cleveland."28
The
flyer
then
cites
historical
reports
by
frontiersmen
about
Bar
Chee
Ampe
(Crow),
also
known
as
Pine
Leaf
or
Woman
Chief,
who
"could
rival
any
of
the
young
men"
and
who
"became
a
warrior...
leading
her
own
war
parties."
One
historical
report
says
that
"the
Indians
seemed
to
be
proud
of
her
and
sung
forth
her
praise
in
songs
composed
by
them
after
each
of
her
brave
deeds,"
even
as
she
finally
supported
four
wives.
These
passages
situate
We'wha
and
Bar
Chee
Ampe
as
historical
figures
in
traditional
roles
that
remain
accessible
to
Native
people
today,
a
point
reinforced
by
the
flyer's
introduction.
After
opening
with
the
statement,
We
are
Indian
Gays
and
Lesbians
living
in
New
York.
We
are
the
present
voices
of
all
our
ancestors
who
would
today
be
called
Gay
and

172
Lesbian,"
the
group
lists
more
than
one
hundred
names
in
Indigenous
languages
for
roles
that
they
name
as
our
ancestors
who
would
today
be
called
Gay
and
Lesbian."

WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
asserted
traditional
belonging
for
Native
queer
people
in
Native
communities
by
linking
them
to
tribally
specific
roles,
even
while
reaching
across
differences
to
imagine
pantribal
alliance.
The
flyer
is
consistent
with
concurrent
Native
activism
in
using
terms
linked
to
sexuality
to
name
roles
the
flyer
defines
by
gender.
While
gay
and
lesbian
must
not
be
read
here
in
a
non-Native
register
as
inaccessible
to
transgender
Native
people,
the
use
of
pronouns
and
terms
does
not
name
their
specific
stakes
in
identifying
with
We'wha
or
Bar
Chee
Ampe.
The
group
offers
distinctly
Native
grounds
for
sexual
and
gender
diversity
that
do
not
derive
from
any
non-Native
queer
history,
identity,
or
politics.
It
also
asserts
traditional
ties
on
national
and
transnational
terms
that
reinforce
one
another.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
thus
anticipated
Two-Spirit
identity
by
asserting
that
inheriting
the
legacies
of
historical
figures
recognized
Native
queer
people
as
belonging
in
Native
communities
and
traditions.
Although
other
groups
also
made
this
claim,
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
did
so
with
a
name
that
invoked
historical
and
traditional
figures.
The
belonging
the
group
claimed
for
Native
queer
people
was
not
a
form
of
acceptance
for
a
marginal
or
minority
group,
but
of
honored
tribal
leaders
who
acted
in
defense
of
their
nations.
The
group
thus
offered
Native
queer
people
ancestral
ties
not
just
to
gender
and
sexual
diversity
but
to
national
responsibility
and
leadership.
Native
languages
and
histories
presented
an
epistemology
for
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
organizing
when
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
required
Natives
and
non-
Natives
to
pronounce
tribally
specific
names
and
recall
their
stories
as
a
condition
of
relating
to
their
work.
In
retrospect,
the
group's
decision
to
embrace
Two-Spirit
identity
without
changing
its
name
makes
sense,
for
the
national
and
transnational
logics
announced
in
Two-Spirit
identity
already,

173
and
literally,
defined
this
group's
indigenist
and
decolonial
work.

In
articles
published
in
its
journal,
Buffalo
Hide
(1990-92),
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
members
situated
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
as
responsible
to
broader
Native
struggles
for
decolonization
that
challenged
the
power
of
the
settler
state.
Addressing
legacies
of
Two-Spirit
activism
in
the
North
East
Two-Spirit
Society,
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
member
Kent
Lebsock
and
NE2SS
elder
wrote
that
the
purpose"
of
such
work

is
to
make
a
comfortable,
safe
space
for
two-spirit
people
to
talk
about
our
unique
issues
and
provide
a
nurturing
resource
to
our
own
folks.
But,
as
members
of
our
New
York
City
community,
as
well
as
members
of
our
nations,
we
attempt
to
discipline
ourselves
to
the
reality
that
we,
as
two-
spirit
people,
cannot
live
in
a
shell
...
The
issues
faced
by
two-spirit
people
cannot
be
limited
to
"gay"
activism.
We
are
part
of
communities
and
nations,
and
that
is
to
whom
we
owe
our
loyalty
and
our
responsibility.
Sovereignty,
treaties,
environment,
sacred
sites,
cultural
revival
and
language
preservation
must
be
folded
into
all
of
our
other

All
these
qualities
are
apparent
in
writings
in
Bufjnlo
Hide,
from
calls
to
support
land
claims,
to
oppose
legal
challenges
to
tribal
sovereignty,
to
critique
cultural
appropriation,
and
to
renew
traditional
knowledge,
teaching,
and
leadership
as
foundations
for
Native
nations
today.

The
commitment
of
Two-Spirit
organizing
to
broader
work
for
decolonization
was
advanced
when
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
helped
to
inspire
the
New
York
City
queer
of
color
coalition,
the
Cairos
Collective.
As
Vaid
noted,
increased
organizing
by
queers
of
color
in
racial/ethnic
and
national
groups
gave
rise
to
new
efforts
to
form
alliances
in
the
1990s.
Yet,
unlike
the
cases
Vaid
notes-where
Native
people
appeared
marginally
or
not
a t
all-WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
defined
the
early
work
of
the
Cairos

174
Collective,
particularly
in
its
news
magazine
COLORLife!
The
first
issue
t h a n k s
"Curtis
Harris,
Ben
Geboe,
the
members
of
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe:
Native
Two
Spirits
in
New
York
and
Rosemary
Richmond,
executive
director
of
the
American
Indian
Community
House
in
New
York
for
your
invaluable
support
in
helping
us
launch
this
project."30
The
first
editorial
theorizes
queer
of
color
alliance
politics
in
relation
to
Native
queer
critiques
of
political
inclusion
in
a
settler
society.
Saying
that
the
American
Dream
is
a
lie.
There
has
never
been
a
`melting
pot,"'
the
collective
writes:

many
of
us
will
never
pledge
allegiance
to
the
United
States
flag
because
of
the
atrocities
and
genocide
perpetrated
against
many
People
of
Color
by
the
U.S.
government,
because
of
the
stolen
land
and
destruction
of
the
earth
over
the
last
five
centuries
that
continues
to
this
day...
We
dedicate
COLORLife
in
recognition
of
500
years
of
the
survival
and
resistance
of
the
first
nations
and
to
the
continued,
principled
struggle
of
People
of
Color
in
a
deeply
racist
society.

By
saying
that
"many
of
us"
(and
hence
not
all
members)
agree,
room
remained
for
queers
of
color
to
take
up
varied
relationships
to
the
state.
For
instance,
a
subsequent
statement-"we
have
yet
to
see
multiracial,
multicultural
democracy
in
this
open
the
possibility
that
readers
might
wish
to
seek
freedom
by
participating
in
"democracy
in
this
country."
Yet
the
editorial
then
situates
all
such
aspirations
within

the
centuries-old
tradition,
much
of
it
handed
down
orally
from
generation
to
generation,
of
documenting
the
ongoing
fight
for
freedom,
justice,
and
dignity
for
People
of
Color-especially
lesbians,
gay
men,
Two
Spirits,
transsexuals,
and
bisexuals
of
color.
COLORLife
reaffirms
our
allegiance
first
to
our
ancestors,
our
tribes,
and
our
cultures.
We
uphold
values
that
are
lifeaffirming,
stressing
cooperation
over
competition,

175
 respect
and
responsibility
to
ourselves,
to
one
another,
our
families,
our
communities
and
the
earth
before
we
pledge
allegiance
to
any
flag
or
government.

Here,
a
vision
of
liberation
for
queers
of
color
draws
from
ancestors
and
their
freedom
struggles,
and
locates
allegiance
in
such
ties
rather
than
in
the
settler
state
or
its
nationalism.
If
this
claim
could
be
translated
as
a
commitment
to
nation,
then
nation
here
can
be
distinguished
from
any
government
that
claims
to
represent
itself
as
a
nation
to
queers
of
color.
Peoples
and
nations
come
before
their
representatives,
just
as
representatives
gain
allegiance
only
by
speaking
from
generational
ties
in
which
the
political
stakes
of
queers
of
color
appear.
The
collective
suggests
that
colonialism,
racism,
and
heterosexism
can
be
opposed
by
queers
of
color
through
forms
of
national
resistance,
in
which
governmental
power
is
displaced
by
genealogies
and
alliances.
In
turn,
nations
are
redefined
as
being
led
by
queers
of
color,
and
hence,
as
perhaps
altered
radically
from
any
currently
observable
governmental
form.
In
turn,
ties
to
ancestors
and
their
struggles
are
not
theorized
by
queers
of
color
along
separatist
lines,
but
in
relation
to
national
resistance,
so
that
gestures
to
family
and
ancestry
invoke
ties
within
and
between
nations
that
are
cultural,
political,
and
open
to
new
alignments.

In
this
context,
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
aligned
queer
of
color
mobilizations
with
Two-Spirit
politics.
The
first
article
in
COLORLife's
inaugural
issue,
"Role
Model,"
reprints
profiles
of
Bar
Chee
Ampe
and
We'wha
from
the
flyer
mentioned
earlier.
A
second
article
titled
"What
Are
Two
Spirits?"
continues:

We
use
this
term
because
it
is
culturally
relevant
to
us.
As
Two
Spirits
we
are
members
of
our
Tribes,
families
and
communities.
We
prefer
to
use
this
term
because
the
titles
"lesbian"
and
"gay"
mean
belonging
to
a
white

176
 segment
of
white
culture.
Though
we
have
gratitude
to
the
white
lesbian
and
gay
communities
who
have
done
work
to
secure
a
safe
space
in
mainstream
culture
for
homosexual
lifestyles
and
issues,
we
find
it
most
important
for
us
to
identify
and
remain
a
part
of
our
specific
communities.
Therefore,
as
Two-Spirits
we
are
Native
first.31

The
article
states
that,
in
today's
world,
we
suffer
from
the
same
homophobia
as
everyone
else,"
and
that
they
intend
"to
assume
our
place
among
our
people-the
First
Nations
of
Turtle
Island"
(4).
These
statements
up
the
stakes
for
queers
of
color
seeking
antiracist
queer
politics
as
they
suggest
that
whiteness
and
settler
colonization
are
naturalized
in
sexual
and
gender
identities.
Asserting
that
lesbian
and
gay
"mean
belonging
to
a
white
segment
of
white
culture"
locates
this
comment
on
racialization
within
the
national
distinctions
to
which
Native
people
lay
claim.
In
this
light,
I
retroactively
read
the
use
of
gay
and
lesbian
by
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
as
one
that
challenged
white
and
colonial
registers
by
making
the
words
signify
the
lives
of
Native
people
grounded
in
cultural
tradition.
Nevertheless,
by
1990,
Two-
Spirit
identity
let
the
group
no
longer
have
to
prioritize
such
appropriations.
Thus,
while
writings
by
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
in
COLORLife!
did
present
Two-Spirit
people
as
role
models
for
non-Native
queers
of
color,
this
did
not
invite
their
absorption
into
non-Native
people's
lives.
Rather,
they
demonstrated
that
Native
peoples
resist
white-supremacist
settler
colonization,
oppose
colonial
theft
of
Native
culture,
and
define
solidarity
as
a
relationship
across
national
differences.
For
instance,
when
the
collective
described
its
work
as
for
"LGBTST
people
of
phrase
inherited
by
its
successor,
the
Audre
Lorde
Project-it
could
seem
to
invoke
the
liberal
multicultural
logic
of
inclusion
within
sexual
minority
politics.
But
in
the
model
of
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe,
with
Two-Spirit
people
representing
nations
distinct
from
all
non-Natives
on
Native
land,
"LGBTST"
challenges
multiculturalism:
for,
whereas
"LGBT"
may
potentially
be
shared
by
any
members,
"TS"
cannot
be,

177
regardless
of
how
anticolonial
non-Natives
might
become.
Native
activism
represented
in
COLORLife!
thus
positioned
non-Natives
as
needing
to
challenge
all
colonial
legacies
in
a
white
settler
society,
including
any
desires
to
absorb
Native
culture,
if
they
wished
to
ally
with
Two-Spirit
people.

Asserting
Native
distinctions
within
queer
of
color
alliances
strongly
informed
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe's
call
to
the
collective
in
1991-92
to
protest
the
incipient
quincentennial.
Writing
in
Buffalo
Hide,
it
stated:

As
we
approach
the
500th
anniversary
of
one
of
the
events
that
radically
changed
the
history
of
the
American
continents
...
we
as
lesbian
and
gay/
two
spirited
people
of
color
can
...
develop
a
clear
analysis
of
our
political
unity
and
why
it
is
important
for
us
to
struggle
in
solidarity
with
each
other...
we
can
use
this
time
to
plan
observances
that
will
help
to
educate
our
communities
about
the
survival
and
resistances
in
response
to
the
half-millennium
of
oppression
that
we
are
now
unmasking.
Each
of
us
needs
to
ask
some
questions
about
the
meaning
of
the
Quincentenary-a
period
of
500
yearsand
then
discuss
why
we
need
to
have
our
own
perspective,
as
people
of
color
and
lesbians
and
gay
men.32

The
statement
concluded
with
a
call
to
interested
people
to
contact
the
group,
which
was
taken
up
in
the
next
issue
of
COLORLife!
when
Curtis
Harris
joined
members
of
the
Cairos
Collective
in
considering
how
they
could
challenge
settler
colonialism.
Writing
jointly,
Mariana
Romo-Carmona,
Lidell
Jackson,
and
Curtis
Harris
examine
their
responsibilities
as
Latino/a,
African
American,
and
Native
queers
to
address
the
quincentennial
by
aligning
with
Native
struggles
for
collective
survival,
resurgence,
and
sovereignty.33
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
organized
a
Two-Spirit
contingent
to
lead
the
New
York
City
Pride
march
in
1991
that
denounced
the
quincentennial
by
calling
all
queers
to
join
them
in
questioning
the
power
of
the
settler
state
on

178
Native
lands.

With
the
Cairos
Collective,
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
countered
the
normative
production
of
U.S.
queer
politics
as
multiracial
by
forming
alliances
with
queers
of
color
where
"race"
did
not
eclipse
"nation."
Challenging
settler
colonialism
located
all
their
engagements
as
transnational
alliances
across
national
differences.
Their
work
disrupts
histories
of
U.S.
queer
of
color
alliances
that
append
Native
queer
people
as
a
racial
group
or
ignore
Native
participation
altogether.
In
sharp
contrast,
New
York
City
queer
of
color
coalitions
formed
by
being
radicalized
by
Two-Spirit
activists
who
led
them
in
challenging
settler
colonialism
as
being
at
the
root
of
institutionalized
racism
on
stolen
land
and
as
a
proper
target
of
antiracist
and
anticolonial
queer
critique.
They
thereby
located
queer
whiteness
within
the
settler
logics
of
liberal
multiculturalism
that
colonize
Native
peoples
while
potentially
co-
opting
activism
by
people
of
color
into
the
multiracial
project
of
a
settler
state.
Importantly,
this
work
distinguished
queers
of
color
from
white
queers
by
marking
their
distinct
positions
under
whitesupremacist
settler
colonialism.
This
model
of
organizing
called
queers
of
c olor
to
interrogate
their
inheritance
of
settler
colonial
power,
by
allying
with
Native
people
in
studying
their
distinct
experiences
of
racism,
capitalism,
imperialism,
and
heteropatriarchy
in
a
white
settler

The
Cairos
Collective
demonstrated
a
unique
capacity
for
solidarity
among
Native
queer
people
and
queers
of
color,
which
suggests
that
they
will
not
take
identical
paths
as
white
queers
when
challenging
settler
colonialism.
White
queers
were
not
part
of
the
collective
because
they
are
not
the
targets
of
the
conquest
and
the
racism
that
"queers"
peoples
of
color
and
Indigenous
peoples
outside
the
norms
of
white
settler
society.
Heteronomativity
defines
all
queers
as
problematic
to
the
racial
norms
of
white
settler
society,
but
white
queers
retain
a
capacity
to
redefine
whiteness
in
queer
form
and
on
that
basis

179
claim
national
belonging.
The
Cairos
Collective
thus
modeled
a
politics
with
which
white
queers
could
ally,
but
not
one
to
which
they
intrinsically
belonged.
The
queer
politics
modeled
by
the
collective
called
all
queer
people
to
account
by
first
committing
to
practice
antiracism
and
anticolonialism.
White
queers
who
aspire
to
participate
can
recognize
their
specific
non-
Native
formation
in
a
white
settler
society
as
a
primary
condition
of
their
lives.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
and
the
Cairos
Collective
thus
model
how
antiracist
and
anticolonial
queer
politics
might
develop:
in
alliances
led
by
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
across
differences
of
"race"
and
nation
in
opposition
to
settler
colonialism.

180
SETTLER
CITIZENSHIP
OFFERS
QUEER
POLITICS
normatively
nonNative
belonging
to
a
settler
nation.
Yet
non-Natives
also
resolve
their
settler
colonial
inheritance
by
creating
queer
cultures
that
make
the
land
their
medium
for
liberating
sexuality
and
gender.
Gay
and
lesbian
counterculturists
in
back-to-the-land
collectives
across
the
United
States
and
Canada
inspired
broader
circulation
of
their
rural
practices.
One
of
their
enduring
legacies
is
the
Radical
Faeries.
Radical
Faeries
apply
back-to-theland
principles
to
a
mobile
practice
that
made
retreat
to
rural
space
a
conduit
for
urban
and
itinerant
people
to
realize
portable
truths.
Radical
Faerie
culture
privileged
rural
retreat
as
a
means
for
non-Native
gay
men
to
liberate
an
Indigenous
gay
nature
and
integrate
it
in
their
everyday
lives.
Most
accounts
of
Radical
Faerie
culture
examine
its
gender
and
sexual
radicalism,
but
apart
from
Povinelli
few
do
more
than
note
its
traversals
of
colonial
discourses-notably,
the
colonial
and
masculinist
object
berdache-or
how
this
informs
gendered
and
sexual
practices.'
My
account
locates
Radical
Faerie
narratives
of
indigeneity
within
material
practices
articulating
settled
land,
which
mediate
Radical
Faeries'
diverse
racialization
as
non-Natives
negotiating
their
relationship
to
settlement
and
Native
peoples.

At
the
first
"Spiritual
Conference
of
Radical
Faeries,"
held
over
a
summer
weekend
in
1979,
leaders
in
Los
Angeles
gay
organizing
led
more
than
two
hundred
primarily
urban
gay
men
to
a
rented
retreat
in
the
Arizona
desert
to
realize
the
ancient
spiritual
roots
of
being
gay.
At
that
and
later
gatherings,
a
few
dozen
to
a
few
hundred
gay
men
briefly
removed
to
spaces
coded
as
rural
or
natural
to
liberate
gay
subjectivity.
The
Radical
Faerie
founders
argued

181
that
gay
men
historically
received
honor
in
societies
they
read
as
Indigenous,
which
they
adapted
to
promote
self-love
and
social
acceptance.'
Radical
Faerie
networks
then
formed
in
the
urban
regions
where
most
lived
in
order
to
sustain
their
culture
between
gatherings,
in
part
by
raising
funds
to
buy
rural
land
as
sanctuaries
that
could
host
gatherings
in
perpetuity.
Although
white
gay
men
from
urban
middle-class
gay
communities
became
their
core
constituents,
Radical
Faeries
always
attracted
a
wider
array
of
people.
Gatherings
included
a
sizable
minority
of
rural
men,
among
them
many
urban
expatriates,
while
a
no
one
turned
away
for
lack
of
funds"
policy
welcomed
people
across
class
differences
with
poor
or
itinerant
people
supported
by
the
resources
of
wealthier
ones.
Women
and
bisexual
men
at
times
visited
gatherings
and
sanctuaries
or
identified
as
Radical
Faeries,
even
while
recognizing
that
Radical
Faerie
culture
had
formed
to
reflect
gay
men's
lives.'
Gay
men
of
color
participated
by
playing
on
and
in
primitivist
narratives
of
queerness
while
studying
their
ancestral
histories
of
sexual
and
gender
diversity.
Yet,
on
joining,
all
were
promised
a
global
and
transhistorical
gay
nature
by
addressing
non-Natives
as
inheritors
of
Native
culture
on
Native
land.
By
making
rural
space
invoke
Native
Americans
and,
by
extension,
all
Indigenous
peoples
through
the
world
and
time,
gatherings
created
queers
as
non-Native
seekers
of
Indigenous
truth,
while
sanctuaries
grounded
their
desires
in
negotiating
non-Native
occupation
of
settled
land.4

My
reading
of
Radical
Faeries
derives
from
a
long
familiarity
that
was
resituated
by
ethnography.
I
first
met
them
in
predominantly
white
circles
of
urban
California
queer
politics
in
the
1980s,
when
their
writings
were
prominent
in
gay
studies
and
their
participation
inflected
queer
Left
networks
and
AIDS
activism.
Those
whom
I
met
were
white
gay
men
for
whom
Radical
Faerie
culture
made
their
activism
sharper,
their
spirituality
gaycentered,
and
their
gender
a
bit
more
blurred.
I
found
that
I
and
many
other
white
gay
male
critics
of
urban
capitalism,
religious
heterosexism,
and
U.S.
imperialism
shared

182
the
experience
of
being
invited
by
Radical
Faeries
to
find
a
natural
home
in
their
communities.
I
declined
these
invitations
because
of
my
initial
ambivalence
and
later
critique
of
what
I
understood
to
be
their
racial
and
colonial
formation
as
a
network
of
white
gay
men
who
appropriated
Native
culture
to
enliven
their
sexual
subjectivities.
Yet,
on
examining
the
colonial
and
racial
formation
of
U.S.
queer
politics,
I
learned
that
the
forthright
addressing
of
these
topics
by
Radical
Faeries
made
it
necessary
for
me
to
engage
them.
I
finally
accepted
invitations
to
participate
by
agreeing
to
do
so
as
an
ethnographer.
My
ethical
responsibility
to
experience
and
understand
the
situated
practices
in
which
I
participated
on
their
own
terms
complicated
the
relative
simplicity
of
distanced
criticism
and
generated,
in
its
place,
the
critically
reflexive
account
I
provide
here.
My
ethnographic
account
centers
my
experiences
as
a
subject
interpellated
by
Radical
Faerie
culture
to
explain,
reflectively,
what
I
had
been
called
to
be.
If
Radical
Faeries
met
me
first
as
an
outsider,
over
time
many
read
me
as
a
potential
member
or,
at
least,
an
old
friend.
Some
affirmed
my
selfpositioning
as
an
ethnographer
while
playfully
arguing
that
this
must
be
deflecting
some
deeper
desire
on
my
part
to
identify
as
a
Radical
Faerie.
I
never
assumed
this
identity
as
my
own,
but
by
participating
I
learned
some
of
the
power
of
Radical
Faerie
culture
to
interpellate
white
U.S.
gay
men
as
non-Native
inheritors
of
indigeneity
on
settled
land
and
thereby
resolve
their
queer
and
settler
formation.

My
ethnographic
account
portrays
the
way
Radical
Faeries
produce
queer
subjects
by
creatively
deploying
rurality
and
mobility
in
the
context
of
settlement.
Notably,
this
resolves
racialized
exclusions
of
white
queers
from
sexual
modernity
by
claiming
roots
in
Native
authenticity
that
appear
to
resolve
contradictions
in
their
non-Native
inheritance
of
settlement.
My
account
emphasizes
how
this
normative
practice
shifts
once
Radical
Faeries
engage
Native
Two-Spirit
people,
a
proximity
not
present
in
Povinelli's
account.
Povinelli
investigates
how
Radical
Faeries
in
the
United
States
and

183
Indigenous
people
in
Australia
mutually
and
disparately
negotiate
the
"autological
subject"
and
its
constraints
by
a
"genealogical
society."'
I
examine
Radical
Faeries
in
the
United
States
as
non-Natives
living
in
power-laden
relationships
to
Native
American
peoples,
cultures,
and
lands,
and
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
in
particular,
mediated
by
the
colonial
desires
producing
modern
queer
subjectivity
as
non-Native-for
them,
especially
through
the
colonial
object
berdache.
This
mutually
constituting
relationship
within
a
single
settler
colonial
situation
produces
linked
negotiations
of
queer
modernities
with
distinct
implications
and
effects.
At
times,
Radical
Faeries
are
criticized
by
Native
queer
people
for
adapting
Two-Spirit
people's
lives
and
claims
to
a
non-Native
imaginary
of
indigeneity.
If
this
resonates
with
Indigenous
women
who
repudiate
white
feminists
as
imperialist
appropriators
of
Indigenous
spirituality,
as
often
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
hold
Radical
Faeries
to
a
closer
relationship
by
educating
them
with
distinctive
understandings
of
how
queerness,
indigeneity,
and
settler
colonialism
shape
their
interrelated
lives.'
I
attended
to
such
critical
engagements
from
the
location
of
ethnography,
which
replaced
the
distancing
effects
of
constructing
Radical
Faeries
as
an
object
by
closely
analyzing
their
creative
production
of
what
Indigenous
observers
critiqued
or
transformed.
Tracing
Radical
Faeries'
negotiation
of
their
racialized
relationships
of
settler
colonialism
led
me
to
notice
how
engaging
Radical
Faerie
culture
has
been
adapted
by
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
to
their
work
for
decolonization.
My
story
presents
encounters
among
Radical
Faeries
and
Native
gay
men
as
further
evidence
of
the
relationality
of
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
within
power-
laden
conversations,
which
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
nevertheless
negotiate
discrepantly.

Imagining
Home

During
the
late
1990s,
I
accompanied
Radical
Faeries
to
various
gatherings

184
and
sanctuaries,
in
particular
the
Nomenus
Wolf
Creek
sanctuary
in
southern
Oregon
and
the
Short
Mountain
sanctuary
in
central
Tennessee.'
The
tiny
town
of
Wolf
Creek
is
located
off
Interstate
5
in
the
valley
of
its
namesake
river,
where
since
1987
the
San
Francisco-based
organization
Nomenus
has
owned
land
nearby
to
host
gatherings.
On
my
first
visit,
I
turned
onto
a
private
drive
off
the
valley's
public
road
and
crossed
a
small
bridge
over
the
creek
to
park
in
a
clearing
at
the
edge
of
a
wide
meadow.
As
I
began
walking
along
a
path
toward
the
sanctuary's
common
buildings,
hidden
behind
trees
in
the
distance,
in
the
late
afternoon
light
I
suddenly
noticed
a
slender
archway
loom
over
my
head.
On
either
side
of
the
path
stood
a
tall,
thin
pole
and
between,
decorated
with
colorful
fabrics,
hung
a
string
of
letters
woven
from
twigs
announcing
"WELCOME
HOME."
I
recall
being
bemused
by
the
meanings
resonating
in
this
welcome
that
I
sensed
were
directed
at
me.
What
does
it
mean
to
arrive
somewhere
one
has
never
before
been
and
be
welcomed
home?
For,
if
"home"
signifies
a
site
of
origin,
then
true
home
would
be
found
nowhere
but
there.
But
if
home
is
where
the
heart
is,
then
its
sentimental
promise-perhaps,
of
original
and
eternal
intersubjective
belonging-becomes
portable;
requiring
no
certain
recollected
person
or
place,
home
may
be
discovered
anew.
This
latter
framing
seemed
to
explain
my
Wolf
Creek
welcome;
friends
had
assured
me
that
on
arrival
I
would
feel
that
I
belonged.
Yet
the
specificity
of
the
sign
standing
at
this
site
demands
a
more
complex
accounting.
Can
home
be
eminently
portable,
producible
wherever
comrades
assemble,
yet
still
link
profoundly
to
one
particular
site?
Could
one
site
in
fact
originate
the
innumerable
analogous
places
and
times
where
future
home
may
be
found,
all
of
which
become
available
on
arrival
there?
Radical
Faeries
produce
these
effects
by
coming
home
to
sanctuaries,
where
myriad
qualities
of
Indigenous
gay
nature
are
recalled
through
intimacy
with
"the
land."
Radical
Faeries
invest
sites
of
rural
gay
collectives
with
desires
that
seem
inaccessible
in
urban
life,
where
land
seems
to
have
been
made
inauthentic
by

185
modernity.
Framing
the
sanctuary
as
natural
and
Indigenous
ground
privileges
it
as
a
space
to
discover
an
ultimately
portable
Indigenous
gay
nature,
which
can
sustain
Radical
Faeries
while
they
are
living
far
off
in
space
and
time
from
gathering
on
the
land.

"Welcome
Home"
archway
at
Nomenus
Wolf
Creek
Sanctuary.
Photograph
by
author.

The
sexual,
racial,
and
national
homecomings
Radical
Faeries
sought
through
land
reflect
early
U.S.
gay
liberation
and
lesbian
feminist
projects,
in
which
white
lesbian
and
gay
politics
was
grounded
in
revolutionary
opposition
to
racism,
capitalism,
and
imperialism
by
enacting
self-exile
from
privilege.
Historians
insist
that
studies
of
their
racial
or
national
form
account
for
how
they
pursued
radically
multi-issue
sexual
politics.'
I
agree,
by
asking
how
that
multi-issue
radicalism
articulated
desires
to
reject
the
racial,
economic,
national,
or
global
power
that
accrued
to
them,
and
to
materialize
this

186
rejection
by
relocating
to
homes
based
in
democratic
socialism,
anarchism,
or
counterculturism.
Belief
that
removing
white
U.S.
gay
men
or
lesbians
to
spaces
coded
as
communal,
antiauthoritarian,
or
premodern
would
interrupt
their
power
was
the
very
means
by
which
such
spaces
fostered
modernist
sexual
politics
animated
by
colonial
discourses.
In
their
racial,
economic,
or
national
homogeneity,
they
imagined
themselves
as
allies
to
peoples
of
color
and
colonized
peoples
worldwide,
but
their
desire
to
also
emulate
or
even
embody
the
oppressed
whom
they
knew
they
were
not
translated
into
their
ruralist,
naturist,
and
primitivist
projects.

Radical
Faeries
inherited
the
material
legacies
of
this
cultural
production
by
white
U.S.
gender
and
sexual
radicals.
The
anticapitalist
collectivism
of
early
gay
liberationists
at
times
adapted
back-to-the-land
practices,
as
when
land
at
Short
Mountain
was
purchased
in
1973
as
a
safe
house
for
gays
and
lesbians
by
a
North
Carolina
Weather
Underground
cell,
which
on
disbanding
passed
the
land
to
Milo
Pyne,
who
created
a
gathering
site
for
gay
and
lesbian
counterculturists
in
the
South.9
The
early
1970s
also
saw
lesbian
feminists
adapt
women's
back-to-the-land
projects
to
new
radical
politics.
Lesbians
who
split
from
gay
liberation
over
masculinism
helped
redefine
women's
liberation
around
a
universalizing
communion
of
lesbian
feminism,
which
new
rural
women's
communes
modeled.
The
sexual
politics
of
rural
separatism
also
saw
lesbian-feminist
cultivation
of
a
women's
spirituality
based
in
European
pagan
and
indigenous
antitheses
to
patriarchal
religion.10
By
the
mid-1970s,
collectivist
gay
men
inspired
by
lesbian
feminists
formed
rural
collectives
on
principles
of
radical
sexual
politics,
separatism,
and
feminist
paganism,
and
by
applying
lesbian
feminism's
universalizing
gestures
to
gay
men.
For
instance,
the
gay
men's
collective
at
Magdalen
Farm
adopted
Maoist
principles
and
brought
gay
men
together
through
rural
gatherings,
including
the
"Faggots
and
Class
Struggle"
conference."
Participants
in
rural
gay
men's
projects
also
pursued
counterculturist
imaginaries
of
primordial
roots
for
revolutionary
gay

187
culture,
as
when
Arthur
Evans,
in
Witchcraft
and
the
Gay
Conntercultnre,
tied
feminist
paganism
to
colonial
ethnology
to
propose
"gay
shamanism"
as
a
nature
honored
by
Native
Americans,
ancient
Europeans,
and
all
"nature
peoples"
that
radical
gay
men
now
renewed.

When
Radical
Faeries
formed
in
1979,
they
adapted
gay
and
lesbian
efforts
to
find
a
home
in
opposition
to
modernity,
even
as
they
altered
backto-the-
land
practice
to
serve
an
urban
desire
for
temporary
retreat.
They
framed
the
country
and
primitivity
as
repositories
of
an
ancient
authenticity
long
sought
by
urban
subjects
of
metropolitan
societies.
Gatherings
granted
participants
a
new
affinity
with
differences
defined
by
place,
race,
class,
and
nation
that
let
them
feel
more
rural
and
Indigenous
than
they
felt
in
everyday
life.
Although
some
Radical
Faeries
critiqued
normative
gay
culture,
all
at
first
identified
as
subjects
of
that
culture
who
chose
rural
mobility
out
of
a
self-critical
rejection
of
certain
terms
of
modern
sexuality
and
then
returned
to
their
everyday
lives
to
call
on
their
comrades
to
follow.
The
work
of
cofounder
Harry
Hay,
later
extended
by
Will
Roscoe,
Bradley
Rose,
and
Randy
Conner,
emphasized
"gay
shamanism"
as
a
natural,
shared
basis
for
defining
gay
men's
lives
in
a
modern
society.12
Such
claims
were
not
embraced
by
all
Radical
Faeries;
some
questioned
if
the
culture
or
community
they
created
was
normatively
white,
anti-intellectual,
or
appropriative,
although
the
rarity
of
such
critiques
left
Hay's
legacy
intact.13
Yet
such
diverse
opinions
remained
compatible
with
retreat
to
rural
gatherings
and
sanctuaries
as
a
method
for
finding
a
sense
of
authentic
belonging
to
gay
subjectivity
and
community.

I
contend
that
Radical
Faeries
discovered
homecoming
in
four
interlinked
ways.
First,
home
appears
in
the
context
of
back-to-the-land
movements.
Although
rural
gay
collectives
predate
Radical
Faerie
culture,
Radical
Faeries
adopted
and
sustain
them.
The
original
gay
collective
at
Short
Mountain
was
the
first
such
group
to
host
a
Radical
Faerie
gathering,
and
their
land
and

188
community
prospered
in
the
1980s
by
benefiting
from
persistent
enthusiasm
for
the
Radical
Faeries
even
as
other
rural
gay
collectives
faded
away.
For
instance,
the
old
Magdalen
Farm
and
later
Creekland
site
at
Wolf
Creek
was
sold
by
its
owner,
the
last
member
of
the
original
gay
collective
to
live
there,
and
was
purchased
in
1986
by
Nomenus
members
from
across
the
West
Coast
to
create
a
Radical
Faerie
sanctuary.
Second,
Radical
Faeries
sustained
their
sense
of
shared
belonging
in
the
reader-written
journal
RFD,
which
was
inherited
from
rural
gay
collectives
and
functioned
as
a
de
facto
Radical
Faerie
journal.
In
these
ways,
Radical
Faeries
grounded
otherwise
mobile
and
multi-sited
practices
in
a
landed
infrastructure
that
granted
them
a
deeper
sense
of
history
and
integrity.

Third,
home
is
elicited
by
a
sense
of
history
in
the
land
that
may
be
felt
upon
arrival.
The
sanctuaries
at
Wolf
Creek
and
Short
Mountain
are
suffused
with
signs
set
out
by
caretakers
that
invoke
distant
yet
sustained
communion.
Wolf
Creek's
eighty
acres
surround
a
rectangular
meadow
interwoven
by
paths;
on
one
long
side
runs
the
namesake
creek's
ravine,
bordered
by
Garden
House
(a
common
house)
and
the
Barn
(kitchen
with
storeroom),
and
beyond
them
the
meadow's
low
slope
leads
to
a
forested
ridge.
Short
Mountain's
two
hundred
forested
acres
of
mostly
uninhabited
gullies
surround
a
ridge-top
meadow,
hosting
a
kitchen
and
dining
building,
barn,
gazebo,
and
bathhouse,
from
which
paths
radiate
across
the
land.
Each
space
evokes
its
history
as
a
locus
for
gathering
generations
of
gay
men
and
friends,
from
a
drag
closet
of
playful
attire
accumulated
over
the
years
to
small
libraries
of
gay
and
counterculturist
literature;
paths
dotted
with
small
cabins
and
old
campsites
that
pass
by
small
groves,
altars,
or
statues
memorializing
Radical
Faeries
and
others
who
died
of
AIDS.
The
materiality
of
each
space
evokes
the
sexual,
spiritual,
and
communal
pursuits
of
a
multigenerational
constituency
that
are
key
to
the
site's
continuity.
In
those
contexts,
homecoming
appears
again
when
re-creating
that
sense
of
life
on
the
land
at
gatherings.
Major
Faerie

189
gatherings
link
small
groups
of
residents
to
up
to
hundreds
of
visitors
for
days
or
weeks
at
a
time,
where
gatherers
cook,
repair
buildings,
and
host
performances
and
rituals
and
discussion
circles,
with
food
cooked
by
the
gatherers
from
food
purchased
with
advance
registration
fees.
Sanctuary
gatherings
create
a
functioning
community
that
the
land
could
never
sustain,
but
that
still
recall
a
vision
of
rural
collectivism
as
their
model
of
belonging.
Only
a
few
residents
live
on
the
land,
and
even
they
moved
there
from
somewhere
else,
but
sanctuary
gatherings
act
to
welcome
visitors
home.

And,
fourth,
homecoming
appears
through
the
sanctuary
as
a
site
holding
out
hope
that
these
qualities
will
be
sustained
even
when
Radical
Faeries
live
far
from
them
in
space
and
time;
for
the
people
gathering
at
Radical
Faerie
sanctuaries
are
the
urban
and
modern
queers
seeking
the
rural,
natural,
and
Indigenous
in
order
to
resolve
their
inheritance
of
settler
colonialism.
My
consideration
of
their
racial
and
national
formation
and
its
relationship
to
indigeneity,
including
to
Native
gay
men,
follows
the
paths
I
took
after
passing
under
the
welcome
arch.

Gathering
Subjectivity

Gathering
enacts
the
central
metaphor
and
practice
through
which
Radical
Faeries
fashion
rural,
natural,
and
Indigenous
roots
for
a
modern
queer
liberation.
Although
the
rarity
of
gathering
community
frequently
defines
accounts
of
Radical
Faerie
culture,
its
rural
spatiality
and
temporality
generate
a
portable
subjectivity
that
references
its
origin
long
after
the
gathering
ends.
Gatherings
assemble
not
merely
their
participants
but
the
very
methods
of
subject
formation
that
participants
take
away
as
a
potential
to
be
realized.
The
rural
space
of
gatherings
nurtures
the
Indigenous
nature
participants
seek,
even
as
gatherings
privilege
tales
of
Native
American
cultures
as
quintessential
indigeneity.
Gatherings
thus
welcome
gay
men
home
to
themselves
and
to
a
world
of
sexual
truth
by
fashioning
Radical
Faeries
from
an
eclectic
assembly

190
of
desires,
enacted
here
as
a
performative
map
they
may
realize
and
then
take
with
them
wherever
they
go.

Gatherings
appear
to
liberate
gender
and
sexuality
thanks
to
the
inspiration
of
rural
space.
Early
gatherings
cited
Harry
Hay
when
cultivating
effeminacy
and
sexual
libertinism
as
authentic
to
gay
subjectivity.
Hay
wrote
near
the
time
of
the
first
gathering
that
heteronormative
culture
recognizes
gay
nature
in
the
appellation
"sissy,"
which
he
asked
gay
men
to
reclaim
and
thus
shed
the
ugly
green
frog
skin
of
Hetero-male
imitation
...
to
reveal
the
beautiful
Fairy
Prince
hidden
beneath."14
Gatherings
reflected
this
antiassimilationist
path
to
gay
sensibility
by
promoting
drag-while
eschewing
passing
in
favor
of
"genderfuck"
juxtapositions
that
troubled
normative
by
inviting
sexual
exploration,
whether
in
the
form
of
a
"gathering
boyfriend"
(or
more
than
one)
or,
on
occasion,
in
more
collective
venues
for
sexual
play.
A
mood
of
sexual
possibility
at
gatherings
belies
the
fact
that
sex
usually
does
not
occur
in
plain
view,
even
as
stories
circulate
that
sexuality
here
is
freed
from
expectations
of
privacy,
coupling,
or
monogamy.
Yet,
from
the
start,
such
practices
accrued
meaning
from
a
rural
or
natural
context
that
appeared
to
go
beyond
their
urban
expression.
Faerie
genderfuck
regularly
undermines
urbane
drag
imagery
of
hyper
femininity
in
a
parody
of
the
putatively
unrefined
or
abnormal
genders
and
sexualities
of
the
rural
working
class.
Articulating
discourses
that
would
frame
them
as
being
unable
to
differentiate
proper
sex,
gatherers
perform
"trashy"
housewives
and
cowhands
to
mock
and
indulge
degeneracy
as
a
way
of
countering
"civilized"
restrictions.
Radical
Faeries
also
parody
their
efforts
to
take
up
rural
life
by
effeminizing
its
tasks
of
clearing
hay,
harvesting
trees,
or
maintaining
cabins,
as
when
one
year
Wolf
Creek
gatherers
donned
eclectic
drag
outfits
for
a
day's
work
under
the
hot
sun
burying
electrical
wire
between
the
Barn
and
the
Garden
House.
Sexuality
at
gatherings
also
gets
represented
as
unencumbered
by
civilizational
propriety
owing
to
having
arisen
in
a
natural,
and
hence
freed,
state.
Such

191
readings
overlap
a
relationship
between
dress
and
nudity
at
gatherings.
If
urban
gay
cultures
sexualize
nudity
at
beaches,
gyms,
and
bathhouses
while
extolling
a
limited
range
of
beauty
based
on
consumption,
gatherings
foster
nudity
as
a
form
of
dress
that
presents
and
celebrates
the
body
"as
it
is."
Radical
Faeries
thus
resemble
naturists
by
rejecting
the
shaming
concealment
o f
the
body,
but
they
apply
this
to
foster
eroticism,
in
that
unreconstructed
bodies
will
more
effectively
link
gay
men
in
natural
communion.
The
gathering
thus
promises
participants
a
homecoming
to
self
and
community
in
uniquely
rural
or
natural
settings
for
freeing
sexuality
and
gender.

Gatherings
further
define
gay
liberation
in
a
spirituality
assembled
from
global
and
transhistorical
evidence
of
indigeneity.
The
first
gathering
hosted
rituals
that
mixed
quasi-Indigenous
rituals
with
gay
translations
of
feminist
neo-paganism
to
honor
gay
men's
effeminate
ties
to
the
land,
as
in
the
"mud
ritual"
that
immersed
gay
men
in
the
earth
as
an
inspiration
for
ecstatic
communion."
During
the
1980s,
gatherings
proliferated
by
taking
place
near
in
time
to
major
neo-pagan
holidays,
such
as
the
spring
celebration
Beltane.
Here,
the
procreative
metaphor
of
the
maypole
inseminating
a
fecund
earth
could
be
reframed
to
celebrate
a
natural
gay
sexuality
emerging
from
Gaian
roots.
At
gatherings
throughout
the
year,
spontaneous
rituals
were
interspersed
with
recurrent
ones
such
as
Donald
Engstrom's
Queer
God
ritual,
which
combines
chant,
meditation,
and
touch
to
incite
gay
nature
while
invoking
ancient
Greek,
European
pagan,
and
Native
American
cultures
as
inspirations
for
gay
shamanism."
The
gay
spirituality
produced
in
gathering
rituals
codes
an
array
of
ancient
cultures
as
evidence
of
indigenized
sexuality
and
spirituality.
Yet
its
transcendence
of
racial
or
national
borders
repeatedly
analogizes
ancient
paganisms
in
Europe
and
America,
portraying
indigeneity
as
invoking
the
Native
American
cultures
Radical
Faeries
first
tapped
and
the
land
where
gatherings
arose,
even
as
European
paganism
remains

192
foregrounded
as
a
properly
racialized
basis
for
white
people
to
claim
indigenized
ties
to
Native
Americans.
Yet
despite
the
perception
that
adopting
European
neo-paganism
keeps
white
members
of
settler
societies
from
appropriating
Native
culture,
neo-paganism
itself
is
reinvented
by
them
to
gain
a
relationship
to
Native
land
and
culture
that
does
not
feel
like
the
conquest
that
they
know
they
inherit.
Gatherings
thus
offer
belonging
to
sexual
truth
via
Indigenous
sexuality
and
spirituality,
but
one
that
in
its
U.S.
origination
specifically
articulates
white
desires
for
Indigenous
European
and
Native
American
roots.

Beyond
tales
of
gay
shamanism,
non-Native
imaginaries
of
Native
culture
are
naturalized
most
thoroughly
at
gatherings
through
the
ritual
of
heart
circle.
Heart
circle
is
the
only
ritual
to
have
occurred
at
all
historical
Radical
Fairie
gatherings,
and
it
has
come
to
embody
the
gathering's
meaning
and
intended
effects.
The
practice
seats
participants
in
a
circle,
where
they
speak
from
the
words
about
feelings
while
passing
an
object
known
as
a
talisman,
which
grants
the
holder
a
right
to
speak
and
obligates
others
to
listen
until
it
is
relinquished.
Heart
circle
structures
everyday
life
at
gatherings:
the
morning
call
to
circle
announces
the
day's
first
event,
and
all
others
occur
around
it,
none
preempting
it.
Some
heart
circles
I
attended
lasted
one
to
two
hours,
others
could
approach
four,
or
continue
through
the
day,
so
long
as
speakers
carried
the
group's
attention
until
someone
made
an
uncontested
suggestion
to
close.
Heart
circle
makes
emotional
speech,
deep
listening,
and
collective
conversation
central
to
Radical
Faerie
subjectivity
while
setting
these
as
the
tone
for
everyday
life
at
gatherings.
Heart
circle's
ties
of
authentic
gayness
to
emotionality
affirm
effeminacy
as
a
strength,
even
as
they
invite
gay
men
into
a
nurturing
solidarity
that
Harry
Hay
described
as
a
"circle
of
loving
companions,"
where
their
experiences
are
mirrored
by
what
he
termed
"subjectsubject
Yet
these
qualities
rest
more
deeply
on
tying
liberated
gay
subjectivity
to
indigeneity.
Radical
Faeries
created
heart
circle
from
a
similar

193
source
as
other
non-Native
counterculturists,
who
in
the
promoted
the
adoption
of
"council
process"
as
a
mode
of
intentional
speech
they
described
as
having
derived
from
consensus
practices
in
Native
American
societies.
Despite
the
existence
of
other
consensus
methodologies,
council
process
received
unique
authentication
by
ascribing
an
Indigenous
origin
to
the
equality
or
collectivism
that
non-Natives
desired.
The
Radical
Faeries'
invention
of
heart
circle
from
council
process
then
tied
an
indigenization
of
truthful
speech
to
emotionality,
in
some
reflection
of
civilizational
correlations
of
emotionality
with
both
femininity
and
primitivity.18
Heart
circle
thus
addresses
non-Native
gay
men
with
indigenized
tools
for
emotional
communion
as
a
means
to
realize
an
Indigenous
sexual
nature.

Taken
together,
the
quotidian
practices
of
gatherings
performatively
constitute
Radical
Faerie
subjectivity,
as
work,
play,
and
ritual
welcome
participants
into
a
global
and
transhistorical
Indigenous
gay
nature.
I
saw
this
effect
at
a
gathering
at
Short
Mountain
in
1995,
when
vistas
afforded
by
the
sanctuary's
central
knoll
portrayed
Radical
Faerie
subjectivity
bringing
gay
men
home
to
one
another
by
bringing
the
world
home
to
them.
Under
the
afternoon
sun,
I
sat
with
more
than
forty
gatherers
spread
lazily
across
the
grassy
knoll.
Many
had
begun
the
morning
outdoors
in
heart
circle,
and
as
the
participants
huddled
for
warmth
and
companionship,
the
clouds
that
had
defined
this
gathering
opened
into
sunlight.
After
circle
many
stayed
to
revel
in
the
weather,
and
kitchen
helpers
prepared
a
lunch
that
people
coming
to
the
knoll
brought
to
share.
A
growing
group
sprawled
across
the
grass
in
varied
forms
of
drag
and
nudity
and
sustained
the
circle's
sense
of
connection.
At
this
center
of
the
commons,
the
group
could
watch
as
the
day's
events,
previously
announced
in
circle,
began.
Across
the
knoll,
people
naked
or
wearing
yellow
fabric
entered
the
bathhouse
for
a
Santeria-inspired
ritual
celebrating
the
Yoruba
goddess
Oshun,
led
by
a
shaven-headed,
androgynous
faerie
as
priest/ess
of
the
ceremony.
Others
passed
by
on
their
way
to
the

194
common
buildings,
reminding
us
that
a
discussion
was
about
to
begin
on
the
Mayan
calendar,
a
form
recently
popularized
among
rural
and
itinerant
people
who
sought
timekeeping
alternatives
for
lives
lived
"off
the
grid."
The
assembly
on
the
knoll
continued
unbroken
until
a
strong
chant
arose
behind
the
common
buildings,
and,
amid
a
repeated
phrase
"Purple
hands
of
healing,
faggot
god,
faerie
god,"
a
group
of
twenty
or
more
began
strolling
down
the
hill
toward
us,
chanting
to
the
beat
of
their
steps.
Thus
commenced
the
gathering's
Queer
God
ritual,
with
participants
weaving
around
the
group
on
the
knoll
to
sit
in
the
gazebo
on
our
opposite
side.
The
structure
stood
just
far
enough
away
that
we
could
see
their
ritual
commence
without
it
interrupting
our
interactions,
which
continued
for
the
rest
of
the
afternoon.

The
activity
on
the
knoll
that
day
performed
a
key
gathering
promise,
of
emotional
communion,
even
as
it
became
a
vantage
from
which
the
gathering
could
be
seen
to
have
successfully
assembled
a
global
and
transhistorical
array
of
gay
truths
to
ground
our
emotional
bond.
For
if
this
gathering
welcomed
participants
home
to
ourselves
or
each
other,
it
was
to
discover
belonging
in
a
remarkably
small
world.
In
the
bathhouse
one
could
meet
Caribbean
indigeneity
and
the
African
diaspora;
on
the
hilltop,
the
ancient
Maya;
in
the
Gazebo,
a
gay
refashioning
of
the
ancient
Greek,
Celtic,
and
Native
American.
"Above,"
lunch
came
from
a
hilltop
kitchen
run
by
a
rural
collective,
while
"behind,"
at
the
start
of
the
day,
circlers
had
been
promised
a
link
to
inner
truth
through
indigenized
ritual.
We
in
the
group
did
not
join
the
events
that
transpired
around
us,
even
as
their
participants
joined
only
one:
but
our
vantage
modeled
the
gathering's
assembly
of
them
all
as
complementary
routes
to
shared
nature.
Our
interactions
might
disappear
from
an
account
of
gatherings
that
focused
on
ritual
activity.
But
if,
in
Harry
Hay's
words
or
Edward
Carpenter's
legacy,
"a
circle
of
loving
companions"
is
the
supportive
envelope
for
the
spiritual
liberation
of
gayness,
then
the
performance
of
a
world
of
gay
culture
around
the
knoll
that
day
produced

195
Radical
Faeries
as
gay
men
who
love
themselves
and
one
another
because
they
know
they
are
already
loved
by
a
world
of
sexual
and
spiritual
truth,
ready
to
be
known
at
any
time
once
tapped
in
this
space.
Our
vantage
thus
revealed
the
gathering
to
act
as
a
crucible,
melding
eclectic
knowledges
into
a
tableau
of
global
and
transhistorical
journeys
that
embrace
Radical
Faeries
with
their
sense
of
home.

Rural
gatherings
perform
such
effects
whether
they
are
held
at
retreat
centers,
wilderness
camps,
or
sanctuaries.
But
my
story's
location
at
a
sanctuary
reveals
qualities
that
I
now
must
pursue.
By
forming
a
portable
identity
that
frees
subjects
and
objects
from
ties
to
time
or
place,
gatherings
beg
a
question
about
the
arrival
that
began
my
tale:
for
the
sign
at
Wolf
Creek
welcomes
Radical
Faeries
home
perpetually
to
that
place,
even
when
no
one
is
gathered
to
witness
it.
While
sanctuaries
may
appear
as
naturalized
backdrops
to
the
activity
of
gathering,
they
differ
from
camps
or
retreats
in
that
their
permanent
possession
creates
them
as
repositories
of
historical
communion.
A
promise
that
the
qualities
of
gathering
continue
yearround
at
sanctuaries
may
be
recalled
by
Radical
Faeries
on
their
dispersal,
and
sought
or
rediscovered
on
their
return.

Materializing
Sanctuary

Like
gathering,
sanctuary
is
a
crucial
metaphor
and
practice
Radical
Faeries
use
to
fashion
modern
sexuality
in
mobile
relationship
to
place.
Yet
if
gatherings
use
rural
spaces
to
assemble
diverse
routes
to
realization
that
disperse
with
their
participants,
sanctuaries
ground
all
such
realizations
at
one
site.
In
name
and
practice,
sanctuaries
offer
Radical
Faeries
refuge
from
an
embattled
life
while
making
rural
land
into
a
medium
for
renewing
spirituality
at
its
landed
source.
Sanctuaries
drew
such
qualities
in
their
U.S.
contexts
of
origin
by
linking
rural
land
not
to
a
generic
indigeneity,
but
a
specific
one

196
through
which
non-Native
gay
men
could
take
refuge
on
originally
Native
American
land.
Yet,
despite
being
a
legacy
of
an
earlier
era,
the
creation
of
sanctuaries
amid
the
growth
of
Radical
Faerie
community
transpired
in
the
specific
period
when
U.S.
gay
men
first
experienced
the
HIV/AIDS
epidemic.
During
the
1980s
and
after,
Radical
Faeries
used
gatherings
at
sanctuaries
to
mediate
their
experience
of
the
epidemic,
including
by
making
sanctuary
lands
sites
of
memorials
to
Radical
Faeries
who
had
died
of
AIDS.
Linking
Radical
Faeries
memorialized
at
sanctuaries
to
gatherers
seeking
gay
nature
created
radical
faerie
community
in
an
indigenized
relation
to
settled
land
that
simultaneously
healed
the
trauma
of
epidemic
and
the
inheritance
of
conquest
for
non-Native
gay
men.

When
acquiring
rural
land
as
sanctuaries,
Radical
Faeries
in
the
United
States
tied
the
gathering's
itinerant
practices
and
global
imaginaries
to
histories
of
settlement.
Yet
if
Radical
Faeries
acquired
originally
Indigenous
land
with
the
anticolonial
intention
to
tap
its
heritage-in
a
counterculturist
legacy
Philip
Deloria
read
as
normative
to
histories
of
Indian
impersonation-they
argued
uniquely
that,
unlike
straight
non-Natives,
their
ties
to
indigeneity
were
a
birthright
of
being
gay.19
Radical
Faeries
also
adapted
a
prior
generation's
rural
hideaways
as
sites
not
for
removal
but
for
ease
of
commute
from
the
urban
regions
where
most
lived.
Thus,
if
sanctuaries
promised
belonging
to
the
land,
no
matter
how
much
they
resembled
settlements,
they
functioned
as
sites
of
transit.
If
movement
was
manifested
in
the
arrival,
departure,
and
return
of
travelers,
it
also
was
referenced
in
the
spatial
and
temporal
scales
of
Indigenous
gay
nature
that
travelers
to
the
sanctuary
sought
to
traverse.
To
adapt
James
Clifford's
formulation,
sanctuaries
materialized
as
simultaneous
sites
of
dwelling
and
traveling.20
Arrival
at
the
Wolf
Creek
welcome
arch
acted
as
a
passage
to
further
travels
of
body
and
spirit.
Yet,
as
a
structure
fashioned
from
the
land
and
emplaced
there,
the
arch
framed
dwelling
at
the
sanctuary
as
a
practice
of
mobility,
where
the
accreted
memories
of

197
generations
of
travels
became
uniquely
available
at
this
one
site.
Histories
of
settlement
thus
inform
the
sanctuary's
promise
of
safe
haven,
but
its
invitation
to
non-Natives
to
articulate
Indigenous
land
shifted
their
occupation
into
movement,
and
back
again,
as
methods
to
link
Radical
Faeries
to
the
integrity
of
an
embattled
community,
as
well
as
to
sure
knowledge
of
an
original
and
permanent
ubiquity
in
all
imaginable
human
worlds.

The
promise
of
sanctuaries
became
acute
during
the
mounting
impact
on
gay
men
of
HIV/AIDS.
The
promise
of
indigenized
refuge
and
sanctification
answered
displacements
caused
by
the
epidemic
for
the
white
men
from
urban
middle-class
gay
communities
that
were
the
Radical
Faeries'
core
constituents.
Histories
of
AIDS
tell
of
a
rapid
destabilization
of
social
and
cultural
institutions
that
precipitated
crises
of
belonging,
as
gay
men
confronted
death
in
the
face
of
exclusion
from
phobic
familial
or
religious
homes
and
from
national
belonging.21
Yet,
if
these
crises
were
the
effects
of
homophobia,
they
were
conditioned
by
the
racial,
economic,
and
national
structuring
of
home,
community,
and
nation.
AIDS
activism
often
developed
among
queer
people
of
color
apart
from
the
norms
of
white
and
urban
middle-class
AIDS
projects,
while
challenging
heterosexism
in
communities
of
color
as
a
new
cadre
of
community
leaders
addressed
race,
sexuality,
gender,
and
health.22
Their
efforts
show
that
crises
of
identity,
community,
or
spirituality
among
gay
men
with
HIV/AIDS
negotiated
sexual,
racial,
and
national
belonging,
such
that
whiteness,
urban
class
privilege,
or
appeals
to
citizenship
conditioned
narratives
of
gay
community
institutions
being
disrupted
or
renewed.
Radical
Faeries
responded
to
AIDS
by
answering
white,
middle-class,
or
urban
desires
for
rural,
natural,
or
indigenous
solutions
to
a
crisis
of
displacement
from
belonging.
The
culture
of
rural
gatherings
can
be
reinterpreted
in
this
light,
as
can
its
materialization
at
sanctuaries,
where
memorializing
struggles
with
the
epidemic
grounded
a
new,
and
yet
ancestral,
collective
belonging
by
indigenizing
non-Natives
and
their
relationship
to

198
settled
land.

Gatherings
fostered
solidarity
by
recalling
and
sustaining
sexual
cultures
that
were
threatened
by
the
epidemic.
Celebrating
drag
and
public
sex
defied
the
increased
pathologizing
of
urban
gay
cultural
forms
by
promoting
them
as
conduits
to
a
healing
gay
nature
that
could
mend
shattered
bonds
with
new
community.
Indeed,
Radical
Faerie
culture
already
promoted
qualities
that
would
appear
in
primary
and
secondary
HIV
prevention
education,
as
it
sought
to
break
social
isolation
among
gay
men
by
encouraging
strong
community
identification
and
emotional
communication
while
supporting
self-care
and
care
for
others.
Heart
circle
specifically
invited
gay
men
to
articulate
feelings
related
to
illness,
death,
loss,
or
survival;
to
receive
aid
from
comrades
sharing
their
struggle;
and
to
strengthen
shared
identity
by
tracing
their
personal
stories
to
common
roots.
These
qualities
spoke
to
people
who
otherwise
might
never
have
approached
a
counterculturist
space,
but
who
found
in
heart
circle
or
other
Radical
Faerie
practices
a
means
to
communicate
needs
and
receive
support
in
crisis.
At
one
Wolf
Creek
gathering,
a
man
experiencing
the
early
stages
of
AIDS
spoke
of
attending
this,
his
first
gathering
as
part
of
recovering
from
caring
for
his
lover,
who
suffered
from
multiple
AIDS-related
illnesses.
He
came
to
the
gathering
taxed
from
managing
their
welfare
with
little
support,
and
I
recall
that
he
remained
wary
of
neo-pagan
ritual,
with
which
he
was
unfamiliar.
But
in
heart
circle
he
spoke
with
gratitude
for
the
support
that
he
had
received,
in
spoken
affirmations
from
the
group
and
after
circle,
he
stated
that
he
wished
he
had
known
that
connections
like
this
were
available
to
him,
for
he
did
not
know
how
he
could
have
gone
on
without
it.
For
him,
the
emotional
intentionality
modeled
by
heart
circle
mediated
a
line
between
despair
and
survival,
including
as
it
specifically
addressed
grief.
A
longtime
practitioner
and
old
friend
once
put
it
to
me
in
this
way,
early
in
my
time
among
Radical
Faeries:

199
 one
thing
that
would
be
very
faerie-one
thing
that
is
a
very
advanced
faerie
kind
of
interaction
that
could
happen-is
for
you,
when
you're
in
a
space
of
profound
grief,
or
knowing
that
you
need
to
get
in
touch
with
some
really
raw
and
difficult
stuff,
that
you
could
call
me,
as
a
faerie,
and
say,
I
need
to
work
through
some
difficult
things,
and
to
have
me
support
you
and
stand
with
you
through
that
vulnerable
space.

I
received
these
words
when
my
struggle
with
the
AIDS-related
illness
of
a
friend
of
my
own
was
intensifying,
and
I
felt
the
value
of
his
words
entirely
apart
from
their
reflections
on
Radical
Faerie
culture.
I
also
recognized
in
them
something
that
heart
circle
participants
might
offer
someone
dealing
with
grief:
complete
attention,
followed
by
affirmation
by
a
loving
community.
Indeed,
his
words
distinguished
Radical
Faeries
from
other
people
precisely
in
their
knowledge
of
how
to
bond
by
forthrightly
facing
grief-at
an
"advanced"
level
that,
perhaps,
comes
from
many
experiences
of
heart
circle
and
the
connections
it
had
forged
among
Radical
Faeries
during
the
epidemic.
Emotional
communication
within
or
beyond
heart
circle
thus
appeared
as
both
an
emblem
and
a
crucial
tool
of
the
natural,
reliable,
and
enduring
solidarity
promised
by
Radical
Faerie
subjectivity
and
solidarity
during
the
AIDS
crisis.

Desires
for
indigeneity
among
Radical
Faeries
addressed
HIV/AIDS
by
grounding
gay
subjectivity
and
culture
in
emotional
communion.
This
specifically
informed
Radical
Faerie
spirituality's
answer
to
the
religious
embattlement
of
gay
men
facing
death
or
survival.
Attacks
on
gay
men
by
the
Christian
Right
linked
homosexuality
to
disease
and
divine
punishment
at
the
moment
when
some
gay
men
were
seeking
religious
or
spiritual
support.
By
this
time,
Radical
Faeries
were
a
fully
realized
movement
affirming
gay
men's
spiritual
worth:
rather
than
gay
sexuality
being
equated
with
sin
or
harm,
it
was
a
carnal
and
spiritual
path
to
truth.
The
fact
that
the
truth
being
realized

200
was
indigenized
also
rendered
moot
religious
rejection
of
Christian
gay
men,
for,
in
the
legacy
of
feminist
neo-paganism,
gay
sexual
nature
derived
from
ancient
cultures
preceding
the
patriarchal
and
colonial
force
of
European
Christian
conquest.
This
bypassed
claims
of
Christian
conservatives
to
represent
America
by
granting
non-Native
gay
men
a
greater
belonging
to
this
land
via
their
inherent
alignment
as
indigenized
pagan
queers
with
Native
histories.
These
qualities
resonated
when
gatherings
and
sanctuaries
offered
to
protect
gay
men
from
endangerment
in
a
heteronormative
society
through
the
resource
of
queer
Indigenous
nature.

The
indigenization
of
Radical
Faerie
culture
became
especially
evident
as
gatherings
took
place
at
sanctuaries
increasingly
marked
by
memories
of
AIDS.
Nowhere
was
this
more
apparent
than
in
establishing
sanctuary
memorials
to
Radical
Faeries
who
had
died
of
AIDS.
In
the
scattering
of
ashes
and
in
ritual
remembrances,
lost
friends
became
one
with
the
spiritual
powers
of
Indigenous
land.
Memorials
and
their
rituals
then
drew
Radical
Faeries
back
to
sanctuaries
as
privileged
sites
of
pilgrimage,
to
sanctify
the
memory
of
those
who
had
passed
while
making
this
activity
key
to
renewing
their
collective
nature,
solidarity,
and
survival.
As
emplacements,
sanctuaries
sustained
these
qualities
over
the
long
periods
when
most
Radical
Faeries
did
not
travel
to
experience
them,
making
them
crucial
sites
of
cathexis
where
gay
men
could
be
assured
that
their
nature
and
its
integrity
was
maintained.

Memorials
dotted
the
landscapes
of
sanctuaries
I
visited,
teaching
gatherers
about
the
inheritance
of
present
and
future
community.
At
one
Wolf
Creek
gathering,
while
strolling
a
footpath
behind
the
Barn
I
unexpectedly
found
myself
before
a
large
altar
resting
near
the
base
of
a
big
oak
tree.
Boxes
and
planks
covered
with
colorful
fabrics
ensconced
photographs,
toy
figures,
costume
jewelry,
note
cards
in
Ziploc
bags,
and
metal
religious
statues
honoring
a
longtime
Radical
Faerie
who
had
died
recently
from
AIDS.
At

201
Short
Mountain,
many
times
I
strolled
from
the
central
knoll
along
a
wooded
escarpment
to
a
shaded
clearing
housing
the
sanctuary's
memorial
grove.
Amid
the
many
objects
placed
on
the
ground-personal
mementos,
small
cairns
of
stones,
fronds,
and
flowers-one
rock,
carefully
tended
and
placed
for
ease
of
viewing,
announced
the
anonymously
carved
message:
"UNION.
This
place
is
dedicated
to
our
holding
together.
1985."
This
proclamation
of
solidarity
against
dissolution
in
the
first
years
of
the
epidemic
echoed
when
I
met
it
in
1995
in
a
space
long
nurtured
by
the
Short
Mountain
community.

Sanctuary
gatherings
also
could
include
rituals
in
which
participants
experienced
memorials
as
key
sites
maintaining
community.
At
one
Wolf
Creek
gathering,
at
the
annual
processional,
gatherers
circumambulated
the
meadow
and
visited
each
memorial
site.
In
the
afternoon
twilight,
a
group
of
forty
began
the
circuit
to
the
beat
of
African
and
South
Asian
drums.
The
group
first
visited
the
land's
oldest
memorial,
the
pendulum,
where
a
tripod
suspended
a
stone
under
which
for
years
the
ashes
of
friends
had
been
scattered.
After
some
time,
we
walked
a
few
hundred
feet
farther
to
a
memorial
garden
planted
originally
by
Oskrr,
a
longtime
resident
now
deceased.
At
both
sites,
huddled
in
the
evening
chill,
members
of
the
group
invoked
Indigenous,
pagan,
and
Radical
Faerie
spirits
of
the
land,
and
told
stories
recalling
old
friends
in
moments
of
fun,
sadness,
or
rage.
The
ritual
concluded
as
the
group
walked
under
the
stars
around
the
meadow's
far
side
to
the
Barn
and
tent,
where
a
kitchen
crew
had
laid
out
dinner.
The
processional
linked
participants
by
not
presuming
shared
history
or
identity
but
narrating
it,
with
memories
of
absent
people
joining
invocations
of
a
deeper
spiritual
context
in
a
material
union
with
the
land
where
gatherers
renewed
their
ties
in
community.

I
observed
sanctuary
memorials
cohere
a
dispersed
constituency
at
the
creation
of
the
Wolf
Creek
bridge
memorial.
In
early
1995,
rains
had
swelled

202
the
creek
and
toppled
the
sanctuary's
only
access
bridge.
The
organization
Nomenus
was
emerging
from
a
period
when
major
gatherings
had
not
occurred,
although
the
most
recent
one
was
well
attended.
Nomenus
leaders
promoted
raising
funds
to
replace
the
bridge
by
establishing
a
memorial
supported
by
donations
in
the
names
of
Radical
Faeries
who
had
passed
away.
Many
donations
came
in,
including
from
old-time
members
who
had
not
participated
since
the
sanctuary's
founding
in
the
1980s.
Building
the
bridge
joined
with
other
efforts
to
enliven
Nomenus
and
led
to
hundreds
attending
subsequent
gatherings,
in
particular
the
1996
midsummer
gathering
when
the
memorial
was
built.
Its
design
and
construction
were
led
by
a
Radical
Faerie
who
at
the
time
spent
part
of
the
year
in
India
following
his
chosen
spiritual
practices.
Implementing
a
plan
to
fashion
a
cairn
from
hefty
stones
in
the
creek
bed,
the
designer
recruited
people
early
in
the
gathering
to
carry
stones
up
the
short
ravine
and
assemble
them
near
the
bridge.
The
stones
encased
a
colorful
central
plaque
fashioned
by
a
Radical
Faerie
artist
on
which
were
inscribed
names
of
people
who
had
died,
including,
but
not
limited
to,
those
for
whom
memorial
donations
had
been
received.
During
the
gathering,
as
people
visited
the
construction
site
or
wandered
past
to
or
from
their
campsites,
the
artist
invited
them
to
leave
items
recalling
absent
friends
that
would
be
embedded
in
the
mortar.

One
day
late
in
the
gathering,
scores
of
gatherers
met
to
dedicate
the
memorial.
Volunteers
assembled
the
group
on
the
far
side
of
the
new
bridge,
and
then
led
us
single
file
across
the
creek,
while
a
young
man
softly
played
songs
on
his
guitar.
On
stepping
onto
the
land,
each
person
received
a
red
ochre
mark
on
the
forehead,
which
the
artist
had
requested
to
sanctify
our
act
as
what
he
understood
as
a
form
of
piija.
The
group
then
gathered
to
sit
or
stand
around
the
cairn,
its
candle-lit
central
basin
filled
with
water
and
flowers,
the
bright
colors
joining
the
plaque
and
embedded
objects
in
reflection
of
the
eclectic
attire
worn
by
this
otherwise
somber
group.
During
a

203
silent
period
before
the
leaders
invited
people
to
speak,
many
present
wept
singly
or
in
small
groups
holding
each
other.
Then,
one
after
another,
people
rose
to
tell
stories
about
those
memorialized
on
the
stone
and
others.
Many
repeated
a
theme
that
those
who
had
passed
were
still
present
in
the
gathering's
play
of
gender
and
desire,
and
they
exhorted
everyone
to
sustain
and
grow
this
community
by
drawing
strength
from
their
memory.
Some
speakers
praised
a
power
they
sensed
in
the
memorial,
fashioned
as
it
was
of
rocks
from
this
land,
while
bonded
to
spiritual
truths
that
they
welcomed
from
other
places.
As
silence
returned,
the
leaders
finally
closed
the
ritual
and
led
the
group
to
dinner
to
share
in
the
community
whose
roots
had
been
renewed
in
this
place.

In
this
scene
and
others,
grappling
with
epidemic
brought
Radical
Faeries
home,
when
memorials
and
their
collective
ritualization
materialized
the
sanctuary's
promise
of
sacred
refuge
in
Indigenous
sexual
nature.
Memorials
made
Radical
Faeries
and
sanctuary
land
one:
in
scatterings
of
ashes;
by
building
memorials
from
the
stuff
of
the
land,
which
were
then
invested
with
local
and
world-traveling
spiritualities;
by
making
these
memorials
privileged
sites
for
the
memory
of
lost
comrades;
and
by
recognizing
their
place
in
a
spiritual
pantheon
made
proper
to
Indigenous
land.
Memorials
dotting
the
landscape
thus
embodied
a
multigenerational
community's
union
with
rural,
natural,
and
Indigenous
truth.
Recalling
memorials
focused
an
otherwise
dispersed
and
mobile
constituency
on
its
ties
to
land
in
a
way
that
assured
their
future
communion.
If
that
ever
felt
under
threat,
memorials
became
a
means
to
invite
pilgrimage
to
renew
an
ancestral
community's
survival
and
sustain
this
space
that
promised
a
home
even
in
their
absence.
Memorials
demonstrate
how
sanctuaries
grounded
dispersed
constituencies
and
their
mobile
quests
for
Indigenous
nature
in
eternal
spiritual
communion
through
originally
Indigenous
land.

204
Troubling
Homecoming

The
potentially
fractious
diversity
of
Radical
Faeries
is
mediated
by
gathering
subjectivity
and
its
materialization
at
sanctuaries.
Radical
Faeries
of
color
have
argued
that
scenes
like
the
ones
I
portrayed
are
racialized
by
the
naturalization
of
whiteness
in
the
global
cultural
diversity
they
invoke.
Particularizing
pagan
Europe
as
a
history
inspired
by
Native
America
produces
a
white
settler
imaginary
of
counterculturism.
Yet,
if
Radical
Faeries
of
color
as
racialized
non-Natives
trouble
this
vision,
they
also
negotiate
their
own
inheritance
of
a
relationship
to
settlement
on
Native
land.
Their
critiques
of
whiteness
and
efforts
to
decolonize
racialized
sexuality
still
can
employ
colonial
discourses
on
indigeneity
that
naturalize
settlement
when
pursuing
their
liberation
through
Radical
Faerie
culture.

I
open
my
troubling
of
Radical
Faerie
culture
with
an
episode
that,
in
its
anomaly,
was
crucial
to
the
day
that
I
and
others
spent
on
the
Short
Mountain
knoll.
Not
long
after
the
Queer
God
ritual-the
last
of
many
quests
for
gay
spirituality
that
we
saw
being
led
by
white
gay
men-I
and
those
near
me
noticed
a
lone
figure
emerge
from
the
Barn.
Arms
undulating,
the
figure
crouched
and
stepped
slowly
toward
us,
slowly
revealing
itself
to
be
a
naked
person
painted
luminously
blue
through
which
glowed
deep
brown
skin.
Those
near
me
recognized
our
comrade
Genie,
and
looked
bemused
as
he
edged
by
our
group
with
a
fierce
grin,
all
the
while
raising
and
waving
his
blue
(and
brown)
arms
above
our
seated
heads,
only
to
pass
us
by
and
disappear
down
the
knoll
into
the
forest,
alone.

Many
of
us
knew
Genie
as
the
only
African
American
resident
of
Short
Mountain
at
the
time,
and
one
of
two
black
participants
whom
I
knew
to
be
at
this
gathering
of
more
than
two
hundred
people.
An
urban-based
artist,
Genie
had
relocated
to
the
sanctuary,
where
he
lived
in
a
cabin
decorated
with
his
paintings
and
other
art,
including
pieces
crafted
from
materials
on
the
land.
I

205
gathered
from
talking
to
him
that
he
enjoyed
his
time
at
Short
Mountain
but
that
he
did
not
consider
Radical
Faerie
identity
to
be
primary
or
that
he
had
to
retain
it
if
he
were
to
leave
the
land.
He
rarely
hesitated
to
speak
if
he
thought
something
required
comment.
For
that
reason,
I
interpreted
his
passage
across
the
knoll
to
reflect
an
artistic
playfulness
and
a
pointed
awareness
of
his
location
at
this
gathering.
He
performed
gathering
subjectivity
by
perhaps
ritually
invoking
a
spirit
or
blessing
within
Radical
Faerie
spirituality.
Yet
he
also
creased
the
flow
of
the
day's
otherwise
collective
events.
His
was
the
only
solo
performance
that
day,
and
the
only
one
not
led
by
a
white
person.
He
also
did
not
invite
anyone
to
join
him,
but
left
witnesses
to
ponder
his
offering.
I
knew
that
Genie
regularly
rejected
projections
onto
him
of
African
cultural
authenticity,
despite
his
personal
interest
in
the
ancestral
roots
of
his
queer
spirituality.
His
performance
thus
stood
out
from
ones
that
proclaimed
an
authentic
racial
or
national
location
for
gay
nature.
Genie
conjured
himself
in
a
color
divested
of
queer
primitivity's
racial
spectrum,
but
its
multiple
tones
of
blue
and
brown
ultimately
revealed
quantitatively
more
color,
which
remained
differently
framed
than
any
other
performance.

I
hold
this
image
in
mind
to
tease
out
three
critical
readings
of
the
locations
of
Radical
Faeries
of
color.
I
contend
that
queer
people
of
color
negotiate
Radical
Faerie
culture
by
marking
and
displacing
whiteness,
and
furthermore
that
they
explore
sexual
and
spiritual
possibilities
by
creatively
adapting
the
primitivism
in
circulation
around
them
in
ways
that
displace
normatively
white
desires
for
cultural
authenticity.
Yet
I
also
suggest
that
continuing
to
link
queerness
to
primitivity
invests
Radical
Faeries
of
color
in
a
unique
inheritance
of
a
settler
colonial
relationship
to
Native
peoples
and
land.

Radical
Faeries
of
color
regularly
remarked
on
the
racialization
of
space
at
rural
gatherings,
as
well
as
in
urban
Faerie
circles.
An
extended
account
of
this

206
topic
in
the
San
Francisco
region
and
at
Wolf
Creek
appeared
in
a
1992
essay
by
Gryphon
Blackswan,
a
longtime
member
of
the
Santa
Cruz
Radical
Faerie
circle.
Blackswan
told
of
the
end
of
his
time
as
a
Wolf
Creek
resident
after
incidents
of
harassment
by
town
residents
whose
targeting
of
him
as
a
black
gay
man
led
him
to
"flee
physical
attack,
vehicular
intimidation
and
the
general
terror
which
had
come
to
be
my
daily
life
in
rural
southern
Oregon."23
His
comment
reveals
that
if
Radical
Faerie
promises
of
rural
sanctuary
do
not
entirely
protect
gay
men
from
homophobia,
they
do
not
even
name
the
potential
intersections
of
homophobia
with
racism
faced
by
gay
men
of
color.
The
white
gay
founders
of
Short
Mountain
and
Wolf
Creek
fought
stereotypes
of
the
homophobic
hinterlands,
but
neither
arose
in
explicit
challenge
to
the
normative
whiteness
or
sustained
legacies
of
antiblack
and
anti-Native
racism
in
rural
central
Tennessee
and
the
southern
Cascades.
If
queers
of
color
visited
these
regions,
they
were
confronted
with
new
contexts
to
experience
racial
violence
that
Radical
Faerie
culture,
as
a
project
of
gender
and
sexual
liberation,
was
not
equipped
to
address.
Blackswan
framed
his
retreat
from
Wolf
Creek
back
to
urban
California
as
a
critique
of
white
queer
complicity
with
racism,
as
the
title
of
his
essay
suggests:
"It's
a
Shame
We
Don't
Have
More
People
of
Color
Participating."
On
his
return,
he
felt
a
"sense
of
abandonment
by
the
community
of
faeries
I
lived
with":

As
I
tried
to
emerge
from
my
aloof
solitude
and
began
to
explore
queer
Santa
Cruz
I
was
treated
to
a
hero's
welcome
by
the
local
faeries
and
found
a
deeply
loving
community.
But..
and
its
a
big
reservation!
I
found
a
white
community
repeatedly
assuring
me
"It's
a
My
reflexive
fear
response
left
me
distant
and
unwilling
to
engage.
(27)

Blackswan
suggests
that
white
Radical
Faeries
expressed
a
desire
to
live
in
multiracial
space,
while
deflecting
responsibility
for
forming
a
white
space
that
produces
the
absence
they
regret.
Blackswan
continues:

207
 I
can
see
now
what
prevents
queers
with
a
strong
ethnic
identity
from
joining
with
faggots
and
dykes.
Generally,
to
do
so
means
to
lose
some
or
all
of
the
support
for
dealing
with
the
recurring
presence
of
racism
in
this
culture.
If
white
queers
can't
support
their
rainbow-hued
sisters
and
brothers
when
we
face
racism,
we
will
either
remain
where
we
do
get
support,
or
move
like
pastel
phantoms
through
queer
life.
What's
more,
if
we
can't
tell
you
when
we
smell
racism
in
your
attitudes,
we
won't
let
you
get
close
enough
to
hurt
us.
Its
only
common
sense.
(28)

Echoing
queer
of
color
critiques
of
queer
whiteness
in
the
United
States
and
Canada
at
this
time,
Blackswan
intimated
that
it
is
a
shame
if
people
of
color
avoid
a
camaraderie
they
otherwise
might
seek
because
white
queers
fail
to
act
as
antiracist
allies.

Radical
Faeries
of
color
later
gathered
to
foster
ally
work
at
a
1999
gathering
at
Short
Mountain
by
forming
Faeries
of
All
Colors
Together
(FACT).24
FACT
facilitated
discussions,
writing,
and
public
actions
at
rural
gatherings
and
among
Radical
Faeries
in
New
York
City.
A
key
theme
was
that
racism
and
classism
shaped
cities
and
rural
regions
to
preclude
working-
class
and
urban
people
of
color
from
finding
their
way
to
Radical
Faerie
culture.
FACT's
analysis
remained
committed
to
Radical
Faerie
culture.
Name d
similarly
to
the
interracial
gay
organization
Men
of
All
Colors
Together
(MACT),
FACT
echoed
MACT's
position
that
racial
inclusion
in
gay
space
allows
camaraderie
to
heal
racism
among
men
of
color
and
white
men.
In
this
model,
racism
manifests
in
people
of
color
being
constrained
from
participating
in
Radical
Faerie
culture,
not
in
the
culture
facilitating
racialized
colonial
discourses.
FACT
fostered
antiracism
precisely
by
affirming
loving
solidarity
as
a
means
for
queer
people
to
cross
racial
differences
in
realization
of
a
shared
sexual
and
spiritual
nature.
Critically
engaging
racialization
among
Radical
Faeries
thus
highlights
the
racial
implications
of
primitivism.
If
white

208
Radical
Faeries
seek
cultural
authenticity
through
European
neo-paganism
or
a
generic
queer
indigeneity,
they
tend
not
to
recognize
the
racism
in
primitivist
and
sexualized
objectifications
of
people
of
color.
Yet,
conversely,
Genie,
Blackswan,
and
members
of
FACT
among
other
queers
of
color
adapt
Radical
Faerie
primitivism
to
address
their
experiences
of
heterosexism
and
racism,
along
two
routes.
First,
playing
on
and
in
queer
primitivism
exposes
the
colonial
discourses
projected
upon
them
as
queers
of
color,
albeit
while
being
unable
to
control
how
their
performances
are
consumed
in
normatively
white
space.
Second,
they
also
invest
in
Radical
Faerie
culture
to
achieve
a
distinctive
sexual
and
spiritual
decolonization,
such
that
their
adaptation
of
a
white
settler
queer
primitivism
may
sustain
its
settler
colonial
logics
in
their
lives.

Reflecting
on
the
first
route,
one
evening
at
Short
Mountain
a
few
days
after
the
day
on
the
knoll,
I
was
sitting
with
a
handful
of
others
awaiting
dinner
in
the
Library.
This
room
in
the
land's
original
house
embodied
a
counterculturist
homestead,
with
old
wooden
carpentry
lining
cozy
bookshelved
nooks
packed
with
antiquated
texts
and
cushioned
chairs
illuminated
by
lamps.
I
sat
reading
amid
murmurs
around
me
that
invoked
gathering
culture:
the
leader
of
the
Queer
God
ritual
speaking
with
friends
about
the
suffering
of
another
from
AIDS;
beside
me,
the
second
self-
identified
African
American
man
whom
I
knew
to
be
at
the
gathering,
besides
Genie,
chatting
with
a
white
friend
about
people
in
the
city
where
they
lived.
Into
the
room
walked
one
of
the
three
cisgender
women,
and
the
only
woman
of
color
whom
I
knew
to
be
at
this
gathering.
Hips
cocked,
she
stood
and
raised
a
serving
tray
with
an
arch
smile,
announcing
`Appetizers?"
The
hungry
gatherers
responded
with
gratitude
over
the
cubes
of
tofu
in
tamari
and
sesame
oil
she
had
prepared.
As
she
moved
about
the
room
I
was
in
awe
of
her
proud
performance
of
Radical
Faerie
culture:
the
metallic
glitter
and
bright
pastel
body
paint
decorating
her
body
contrasted
with
her
brown
face

209
and
shoulders,
while
her
bare
chest
marked
her
difference
from
the
many
hairy
chests
and
male
genitalia
visible
at
the
gathering.
Nevertheless,
her
partial
nudity
performed
the
self-love
that
Radical
Faerie
culture
invites
for
the
body.
I
read
her
choice
of
silky
pantaloons
as
an
effort
by
a
South
Asian
woman
to
act
in
and
against
Orientalist
imagery
of
Asian
female
sensuality,
just
as
camping
up
a
racialized
domestic
role
became
a
means
to
assert
her
authority
in
Radical
Faerie
space
while
simultaneously
performing
egalitarian
communalism.
My
reverie
was
shaken
as
she
approached
the
two
men
nearest
me.
The
white
one
took
her
in
with
appreciation
and
a
glad
smile
and,
leaning
in
to
get
a
snack,
softly
said,
"Oh!
I
feel
like
I'm
in
some
exotic
restaurant!"
For
a
second
it
seemed
that
his
mock
belief
in
her
play
on
the
alien
servant
role
would
slide.
But
she
paused,
and
looked
down
at
him;
and
his
friend
paused,
mouth
open
as
if
unsure
what
to
say.
But
then
she
moved
on,
as
at
least
some
of
us
noted
how
the
speaker's
"joke"
-or
sincere
reflection-marked
a
power
within
which
everyone
busily
played,
but
that
in
this
case
seemed
to
make
her
play
serve
his.

This
moment
reminds
me
of
the
dilemmas
in
spaces
that
queerly
perform
racial
and
colonial
discourses.
My
account
implicitly
invokes
Jose
Esteban
Munoz
theorizing
disidentification
for
queers
of
color
as
a
mode
of
troubling
false
choices
between
separatism
and
assimilation
by
critically
engaging
the
terms
of
dominant
discourses.21
I
am
reminded
of
Jana
Braziel's
reading
of
the
drag
performance
of
Dred/Mildred
Gerestant
as
portrayed
in
Gabriel
Baur's
Venus
Boyz
(2001).26
Braziel
rejects
readings
of
Dred's
performance
as
either
a
celebratory
liberation
of
black
masculinity
or
a
recirculation
of
racial
stereotype
for
a
white
gaze.
For
Braziel,
Dred's
performance
critically
inhabits
blaxpolitation
imagery
of
black
masculinities
to
force
white
audiences
to
confront
their
racialized
desires
while
exceeding
them
by
manifesting
desires
for
gender-queer
black
subjectivity.
I
read
the
scene
in
the
Library
similarly,
except
that
here
the
primitivism
that
Radical
Faeries
promote
as
a
route
to

210
freedom
leaves
queers
of
color
open
to
projections
of
its
racism.
For
Genie,
as
in
the
Library,
practicing
gathering
subjectivity
led
to
exhibiting
the
naked
body,
but
precisely
by
defying
a
white
naturist
belief
that
the
unclothed
body
is
emptied
of
social
meaning:
by
creatively
using
color
and
comportment
to
force
audiences
to
consider
the
racialization
of
skin
and
the
capacity
to
performatively
rearticulate
it.
Neither
scene
performed
an
authentic
primitivity,
but
rather
adapted
colonial
stereotypes
for
critical
witnessing
by
white
Radical
Faeries,
as
well
as
by
themselves
and
by
one
another
as
queers
of
color.

Of
course,
the
flip
side
to
primitivism
as
hegemony
for
Radical
Faeries
of
color
is
its
ability
to
be
adapted
to
their
own
liberation,
as
suggested
by
oral
accounts
of
people
of
color
participating
in
Radical
Faerie
culture
from
its
earliest
years.
While
Radical
Faeries
of
color
often
critique
white
racism,
they
have
tended
not
to
regard
the
route
to
Indigenous
gay
nature
through
European
neo-paganism
as
inherently
oppressive.
That
model
presumes
Indigenous
sexualities
and
spiritualities
as
primal
to
all
queers,
so
that
a
distinctive
form
analogous
to
berdache
will
appear
in
every
person's
cultural
o r
racial
heritage.
Radical
Faeries
of
color
can
adapt
this
model
to
find
roles
that
are
unique
to
their
heritage
while
still
linked
to
a
general
Radical
Faerie
principle.
For
instance,
in
1990
Henry
Holmes
profiled
Radical
Faerie
culture
in
the
black
gay
and
lesbian
magazine
BLK,
and
called
it
a
space
where
black
gay
men
can
explore
the
spiritual
qualities
of
being
gay
and
argue
for
their
embrace
in
black
communities.27
In
another
essay,
"Searching
for
My
Gay
Spiritual
Roots,"
Blackberri
says
that
as
an
African-American
gay
man,
I
have
no
desire
to
embrace
cultural,
spiritual,
or
religious
roots
that
are
not
my
own.
I
have
sought
out
my
ancient
roots
and
I
am
proud
of
my
discovery."28
He
says
that
his
roots
are
not
drawn
from,
nor
should
they
be
claimed
by,
anyone
who
does
not
share
his
heritage.
Yet
even
this
defense
of
cultural
specificity,
in
the
context
of
Radical
Faerie
culture,
is
premised
on
belief
in
a
universal

211
Indigenous
queer
nature.
Even
if
Radical
Faeries
agree
only
to
perform
roles
that
are
"racially
appropriate"
to
them,
any
such
performance
will
affirm
the
belief
inspired
by
imaginaries
of
berdache
that
a
common
Indigenous
nature
runs
through
them.
Here,
antiracism
in
the
form
of
a
critique
of
cultural
appropriation
is
compatible
with
white
settler
queer
primitivism
defining
white
queers
and
queers
of
color
as
non-Natives
discovering
their
truths
by
imagining
Native
American
and,
by
extrapolation,
their
own
Indigenous
roots.
Of
course,
if
men
of
c olor
like
Holmes
and
Blackberri
use
Radical
Faerie
culture
to
assert
their
belonging
to
another
community-for
them,
the
black
community-they
differ
from
white
gay
men
who
claim
their
primordial
European
or
global
Indigenous
heritage
to
belong
only
to
the
Radical
Faeries.
In
this
sense,
gay
men
of
color
may
be
positioned
less
like
white
gay
men
and
more
like
Native
gay
and
Two-Spirit
men
who
wish
to
achieve
belonging
to
Native
nations.
But
if
gay
men
of
color
identify
with
the
white
settler
queer
primitivism
of
Radical
Faerie
identity,
then
their
racial
and
sexual
liberations
may
track
the
routes
of
white
colonial
desires.

This
possibility
returns
in
Blackswan's
account,
after
he
finds
renewed
homecoming
through
Radical
Faerie
community
and
Native
American
spirituality.
After
withdrawing
for
a
time
from
the
Radical
Faeries,
he
was
drawn
out
again
by
attending
a
sweat
lodge.
He
does
not
say
who
hosted
this
lodge,
and
it
is
not
described
as
a
Radical
Faerie
activity,
but
the
apparent
absence
of
Native
people,
its
mixed-gender
composition,
and
its
therapeutic
use
for
emotional
communication
mark
it
as
a
non-Native
practice.
The
ritual
allowed
him
to
purge
accumulated
stress
and
achieve
a
powerful
resolution:

As
the
bile
and
sulfur
poured
forth
...
one
brave
white
woman
silenced
all
the
participants
urging
me
to
trust
them,
aborted
their
efforts
to
deflect
the
discussion
into
the
safety
of
abstraction,
and
waved
away
all
hands
seeking
to
soothe
my
savage
breast.
With
a
level
gaze
she
chanted
"I
hear

212
 you,"
as
decades
of
bitter
pain
and
flaming
anger
erupted
from

The
moment
ends
with
her
simply
holding
him
and
repeating,
"I
hear
you,
I
hear
you"
Having
"unleashed
my
demons,"
Blackswan
says
the
experience
inspired
him
to
renew
his
ties
to
the
communities
he
had
left,
including
by
returning
to
join
the
Radical
Faerie
caretakers
at
Wolf
Creek.
He
ends
by
recalling
that
I
had
a
wonderful
time
with
my
faerie
brothers
and
left
feeling
even
more
hopeful"

Blackswan's
account
locates
Native
America
as
a
spiritual
and
emotional
medium
he
traverses
as
a
black
gay
man
to
heal
racism
and
heterosexism
so
that
he
can
rejoin
a
non-Native
community
that
emulates
Native
spirituality.
Scholars
of
the
historical
interdependence
of
Native
Americans
and
African
Americans
argue
that
efforts
to
recall
it
infuse
black
subjectivities
quite
distinctly
from
white
desires
for
Native
roots,
and
should
inform
how
we
read
narratives
like
Blackswan's
that
do
not
explicitly
state
any
tie
to
Native
heritage.30
Yet,
by
attempting
to
form
ties
from
within
an
apparently
white
appropriation
of
Native
spirituality,
Blackswan's
healing
from
racism
and
his
experience
of
white
antiracism
are
enabled
by
perpetuating
the
frame
of
white
settler
colonial
desires.
His
return
to
Wolf
Creek
finally
suggests
that
his
journey
is
mediated
by
the
sanctuary's
promise
of
healing
through
ties
to
Native
land.
With
the
myth
of
protection
and
communion
at
the
sanctuary
already
disturbed,
Blackswan
never
lives
there
permanently
again.
Thus,
with
the
landed
ritual
of
the
sweat
lodge
as
a
trigger,
his
visit
to
Wolf
Creek
seems
less
a
wish
to
rejoin
Radical
Faerie
community
than
a
desire
to
access
the
sanctuary's
landed
method
of
linking
non-Native
queers
to
Indigenous
gay
nature.
Although
he
ends
by
warning
that
racism
remains
a
deal
breaker,
his
use
of
Native
ritual
to
affirm
shared
Indigenous
roots
does
connect
non-
Natives
across
race
to
make
indigeneity
a
condition
of
their
mutual
liberation.
Critiquing
whiteness
and
healing
racism
remain
compatible
with
naturalizing

213
settlement
among
queers
of
color
if
their
goal
is
to
join
a
queer
modernity
that
locates
the
Indigenous
peoples
of
the
lands
where
they
live
in
the
past
so
as
to
let
them
realize
a
non-Native
future
of
liberation.

Negotiating
Friendship

Radical
Faerie
efforts
to
realize
Indigenous
gay
nature
transformed
during
the
1990s
when
they
increasingly
sought
to
collaborate
with
Native
gay
and
Two-
Spirit
men.
I
now
trace
how
such
ties
grew
in
the
1990s
in
relationship
to
Two-Spirit
organizing.
Native
gay
men
were
increasingly
cultivating
spiritual
leadership
as
Two-Spirit
people
in
Native
communities,
and
Radical
Faeries
sought
to
learn
from
them.
Some
Native
gay
and
Two-Spirit
men
found
it
useful
to
hold
Radical
Faeries
responsible
to
their
independent
work
to
renew
traditional
spirituality
in
their
nations.
At
times,
the
intimacy
of
their
exchanges
could
appear
to
be
attempts
to
indigenize
Radical
Faeries
or
to
locate
Two-Spirit
spirituality
within
a
non-Native
queer
spirituality
movement.
Yet
Native
gay
and
Two-Spirit
men
answered
invitations
to
collaborate
with
Radical
Faeries
by
clarifying
their
differences
and
then
applying
that
work
to
pursuing
their
leadership
as
Two-Spirit
people
in
Native
communities
pursuing
forms
of
decolonization.
Their
very
proximities
can
be
read
as
signs
of
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
forming
distinctly
in
relationship,
in
particular
by
conversation
on
the
terms
and
implications
of
their
"friendship."

I
have
experienced
Radical
Faerie
space
as
not
only
predominantly
white
but
distinctly
non-Native.
On
those
occasions
when
I
met
Native
people,
I
heard
them
identify
not
as
Radical
Faeries
so
much
as
old
friends
of
Radical
Faerie
community.
Similarly,
I
understood
Radical
Faeries
who
seek
ties
to
Native
gay
and
Two-Spirit
men
not
to
be
asking
that
they
join
and
claim
a
Radical
Faerie
identity,
but
that
they
interact
precisely
as
a
difference
that
Radical
Faeries
desire.
Maintaining
the
specificity
of
Two-Spirit
(correlated

214
here
to
berdache)
sustains
the
focal
point
around
which
all
global
and
transhistorical
extrapolations
of
gay
nature
are
made-a
function
that
would
be
lost
if
Two-Spirit,
among
all
other
evidences
of
indigeneity,
did
not
remain
different
from
the
amalgamated
identity
of
a
Radical
Faerie.
I
observed
this
reinforcement
of
difference
when
Radical
Faeries
described
their
ties
to
Native
gay
men
in
the
language
of
friendship,
which
suggests
that
they
cross
a
meaningful
difference
in
order
to
enter
into
relationship.
And
Native
gay
and
Two-Spirit
men
who
interacted
with
Radical
Faeries
invoked
friendship,
differently;
friendship
was
a
way
that
they
affirmed
how
non-Natives
have
supported
them
while
still
holding
them
accountable
to
work
for
Indigenous
decolonization.
The
logic
of
friendship
placed
Radical
Faeries
and
Native
gay
men
in
conversation,
but
its
meanings
and
effects
differed
for
each
group.
Importantly,
their
friendship
interactions
increasingly
brought
Radical
Faeries
to
admit
their
non-Native
locations
in
a
settler
society
and
to
hold
themselves
responsible
to
Native
people
as
critics
of
colonialism.

During
the
late
1990s,
the
stories
of
friendship
I
witnessed
most
among
Native
gay
men
and
Radical
Faeries
referenced
Harry
Hay.
Will
Roscoe,
Walter
Williams,
Sue-Ellen
Jacobs,
and
other
non-Native
scholars
recognized
Hay's
collection
of
anthropological
and
sexual
minority
writing
on
berdache
as
a
key
resource
for
their
work.
When
communicating
with
Native
gay
men
about
Radical
Faeries,
I
often
witnessed
gestures
of
respect
for
Hay,
as
well
as
for
scholars
such
as
Jacobs
or
Lakota
anthropologist
Beatrice
Medicine,
for
the
years
in
which
they
attended
to
the
historical
knowledge
Native
queer
people
later
reclaimed
at
a
time
when
racism
and
heterosexism
left
them
with
few
allies.
At
times
I
heard
Native
gay
men
also
cite
a
story
linking
their
affirmations
of
Hay's
friendship
to
a
moment
in
his
youth
when
he
met
the
Shoshone
and
Paiute
religious
prophet
Wovoka.
I
also
heard
this
story
from
Radical
Faeries,
with
somewhat
different
implications,
after
it
appeared
in
Will
Roscoe's
1996
collection
of
Hay's
writings,
Radically
Gay:
Gay
Liberation
in

215
the
Words
of
Its
Founder.
Its
opening
chapter,
"How
Did
He
Know?"
describes
how
as
a
young
man
Hay
lived
one
summer
in
Nevada
near
a
Shoshone
and
Paiute
gathering,
which
he
felt
drawn
to
visit.
On
arrival,
participants
at
the
gathering
brought
him
to
be
introduced
to
Wovoka,
who
spoke
with
him
for
some
time
and
then
touched
him
on
the
forehead,
saying
You
will
be
a
friend."
The
implications
drawn
from
this
story
by
Radical
Faeries
included
that
Wovoka
had
recognized
Hay
as
a
Two-Spirit
person,
and
that
this
granted
all
Radical
Faeries
permission
to
recognize
themselves
as
comparable
or
even
equivalent
to
Two-Spirit
people.
In
contrast,
when
I
heard
Native
gay
men
tell
this
story-one
that
was
apparently
known
to
them
before
Roscoe's
book-their
statements
of
deep
respect
for
Wovoka
and
his
leadership
affirmed
Hay
as
important
to
their
work
to
recall
Two-Spirit
traditions
and
reestablish
their
own
belonging
as
Native
people
within
their
nations.
Wovoka's
affirmation
of
Hay's
friendship
indicated
to
them
that
his
acts
would
benefit
Native
people,
not
non-Natives-and
not
that
the
latter
were
therefore
authorized
to
adopt
Native
culture.
The
multiple
retellings
of
this
story
mark
the
nonidentical
locations
and
stakes
of
Radical
Faeries
and
Native
gay
and
Two-Spirit
men,
even
as
the
retellings
surfaced
precisely
in
discussing
their
mutual
relationship
to
Hay.

Both
mutual
ties
and
distinctions
appear
when
Native
gay
men
communicate
with
non-Native
proponents
of
queer
spirituality.
For
instance,
Mark
Thompson's
Gay
Soul
(1994),
a
collection
of
interviews
with
fifteen
white
theorists
of
gay
spirituality
includes
an
interview
Thompson
specifically
sought
with
Clyde
M.
Hall,
founding
GAI
member
and
contributor
to
Living
the
Spirit.
As
a
chronicler
of
Radical
Faerie
culture,
Thompson
learned
in
the
early
1990s
that
Hall
was
among
the
Native
gay
and
Two-Spirit
men
studying
traditional
religion
and
accepting
forms
of
spiritual
leadership
in
their
nations.
Hall's
autobiographical
writing
tells
how
during
his
time
with
GAI
he
remained
linked
to
the
Shoshone-Bannock
reservation
where
he
was
raised,

216
and
where
he
returned
to
work
as
a
tribal
magistrate
during
the
1980s.
His
participation
in
Native
queer
community
inspired
him
to
come
out
back
home
and
integrate
a
Two-Spirit
identity
specific
to
Shoshone
culture
into
his
participation
in
Shoshone
community.
This
included
receiving
from
his
aunt
the
authority
to
renew
and
lead
the
Shoshone
Naraya
dance.
3I
The
Naraya
had
not
been
danced
since
the
1930s.
With
renewed
interest
in
traditional
religion
in
the
during
the
heyday
of
the
American
Indian
Movement
(AIM),
the
dance
keepers
introduced
Hall
and
other
Shoshone
youth
to
the
dance,
only
to
retire
it
once
again.
In
the
1990s,
Hall
accepted
responsibility
to
renew
and
lead
the
Naraya
in
his
Shoshone
community
and
as
a
means
to
link
Shoshone
and
other
Native
peoples
in
the
Great
Basin
and
beyond."-
Hall
presented
the
Naraya
as
`A
Dance
for
All
Peoples"
that
could
grow
by
placing
Native
people
of
many
nations
and
nonNatives
under
the
direction
of
its
Shoshone
leaders.
Religious
leadership
brought
Hall
new
visibility
among
Native
queer
people
in
Two-Spirit
organizing.
Some
affirmed
his
work
as
renewing
traditional
spiritual
leadership
or
Two-Spirit
people,
while
others
criticized
him
for
allowing
non-Natives
to
participate
and
questioned
if
this
marketed
Native
culture
for
non-Native
consumption.33
Hall's
work
also
drew
attention
from
non-Native
gay
men,
and
led
Thompson
to
include
Hall
in
his
profiles
of
leaders
of
gay
spirituality.

In
the
interview
with
Hall,
Thompson's
questions
promote
themes
common
to
non-Native
queer
spirituality
movements,
which
Hall
engages
while
offering
alternative
viewpoints
reflecting
the
perspectives
of
Native
people.
Thompson
invites
Hall
to
tell
his
life
story
by
choosing
words
that
clearly
condition
what
Hall
will
say
within
a
set
of
assumptions:
that
a
gay
social
minority
exists
in
all
human
societies;
that
it
expresses
a
spirituality
all
gay
men
must
learn
if
they
wish
to
know
their
true
selves;
and
that
the
"social
constructionism"
promoted
by
academics
is
inimical
to
this
truth.34
Without
directly
contradicting
any
of

217
Thompson's
assumptions,
Hall
deflects
the
directions
Thompson
sets
out
by
beginning
his
answers
in
other
places
and
arriving
at
distinct
conclusions.
Hall's
recollections
of
his
life
repeatedly
reference
the
effects
on
Shoshone
and
other
Native
peoples
of
living
in
a
settler
colonial
situation:
growing
up
with
extended
family
on
the
reservation;
facing
white
racism,
and
its
internalization
in
his
life
and
among
other
Native
gay
men;
and
overcoming
this
by
"having
a
connection
with
...
pride
in
oneself,"
which
Hall
traces
to
support
by
his
family,
GAI,
and
recognized
leadership
in
Shoshone
community
(123).
At
several
points,
Thompson
asks
Hall
to
explain
how
gay
Shoshone
people
on
the
reservation
live
distinctive
lives-implying
that
he
wants
to
hear
about
how
they
might
perform
a
traditional
gay
role.
Hall
responds
by
situating
Shoshone
gay
men's
lives
in
contemporary
social
conditions,
notably
in
struggles
with
selfacceptance.
He
suggests
that
Shoshone
gay
men
and
lesbians
might
connect
to
unique
roles
in
Shoshone
religion,
but
if
they
did
so
they
would
not
all
be
taking
a
single
role
or
path
(ibid.).
By
the
end
of
the
interview,
Hall
has
stated
that
traditional
roles
existed
for
masculine
women
and
feminine
men
in
Shoshone
culture,
and
that
these
persons
had
access
to
distinctive
forms
of
spiritual
insight
But
his
words
do
not
directly
validate
Thompson's
efforts
to
propose
and
generalize
a
universal
gay
nature
for
non-Natives.
Rather,
all
his
responses
situate
Shoshone
people's
experiences
specifically
within
the
distinctive
contexts
of
Shoshone
national
culture
and
their
struggles
amid
ongoing
colonization.

This
contrasting
effect
is
particularly
apparent
when
Hall
replies
to
Thompson's
final
question,
"What
can
non-Indian
gay
men
learn
from
gay
Indian
traditions
or
beliefs
that
would
be
of
most
value
to
them?":

The
most
important
thing
is
survival.
Survival
as
a
community.
Survival
in
a
spiritual
sense,
individually
and
collectively.
Indian
people,
of
course,
were
devastated
a
hundred
years
ago
by
diseases
and
warfare.
At
one

218
 point
we
were
called
the
vanishing
American.
But
were
still
here.
And
that's
what
gay
men
have
to
think
about,
what
with
AIDS,
political
unrest,
and
fighting
for
basic
rights.
Spirit
willing
we
as
gay
people
will
still
be
here
a
hundred
years
from
now,
and
we
will
look
back
at
what
we've
done
to
make
it.
(130)

Gay
Indians
appear
here
not
as
"traditions"
or
"beliefs"
(in
Thompson's
words)
but
as
constituents
of
Native
peoples
who
survived
and
still
resist
colonization.
The
lesson
for
non-Native
gay
men
is
taught
by
Native
peoples
collectively,
and
by
Native
gay
men
as
members
of
their
nations.
Hall
further
indicates
that
the
issues
facing
non-Native
gay
men
today
also
are
faced
by
him,
except
that
he
locates
the
AIDS
crisis
and
New
Right
homophobia
as
qualities
of
a
settler
colonial
society
that
created
health
inequalities
and
political
backlash
in
ways
that
distinctly
confront
Native
and
non-Native
gay
men.
His
words
allow
for
flexibility
in
the
pronoun
we,
which
first
references
"Indian
people"
collectively
("we're
still
here")
and
only
subsequently
invokes
we
as
gay
people"
needing
to
survive
in
a
time
when
we
will
look
back
at
what
we've
done
to
make
it."
The
link
Hall
finally
offers
"Indian
people"
and
"gay
people"
is
a
lesson
in
survival:
Natives
who
survived
a
genocide
brought
by
non-Natives
remain
to
educate
non-Native
gay
men
in
surviving
their
endangerment
by
studying
settler
colonialism
and
Native
resistance.
His
responses
to
Thompson's
effort
to
place
Native
gay
men
within
a
global
and
transnational
gay
spirituality
are
neither
primordial
nor
authenticating,
but
historicizing.
These
distinctions
arise
in
an
attempt
to
converse
within
a
space
of
mutual
regard
and
potential
friendship.
In
this
exchange,
non-Native
gay
men
adapt
the
words
of
Native
gay
men
to
their
desires
for
Indigenous
nature,
while
Native
gay
men
engage
those
desires
by
inviting
non-Native
gay
men
into
new
accountability
in
their
work
for
decolonization.

The
difference
among
historicizing
tales
of
Native
survival
and
colonial

219
desires
for
Indigenous
truth
informed
how
Radical
Faeries
and
Two-Spirit
people
interacted
in
the
1990s.
I
first
met
Native
gay
men
seeking
out
Radical
Faeries
with
an
offer
of
religious
leadership
in
1999.
Near
the
winter
solstice,
the
Santa
Cruz
Radical
Faerie
circle
invited
Marten,
an
old
friend
of
some
members,
to
join
them
for
a
few
days
to
reconnect.
Marten
had
lived
nearby
before
returning
to
work
with
his
tribal
community,
yet
some
local
Radical
Faeries
said
that
he
had
faced
homophobia
there.
Recently,
he
had
asked
friends
for
help
in
affirming
his
sense
of
spiritual
belonging
to
his
culture
by
creating
space
for
him
to
practice
his
religious
leadership.
Arrangements
were
made
for
him
to
lead
a
sweat
lodge
for
Radical
Faeries
and
friends.
The
evening
event
drew
nearly
forty
people
to
one
participant's
property
outside
town.
As
I
drove
up
to
the
oak-crowned
knolls
of
the
land
owned
by
our
host,
I
saw
in
the
twilight
dozens
of
Radical
Faeries
dressed
in
varieties
of
working
professional
or
hippie
attire.
Some
cleared
a
circle
on
level
ground
below
the
house's
hilltop
perch,
where
a
lodge
was
being
built
on
a
frame
of
staked
branches,
and
a
fire
was
stoked
by
Marten
and
the
assistant
he
had
chosen
for
this
task,
Jorge,
a
guest
who
lived
on
the
host's
property.
As
night
fell,
Marten
called
on
those
gathered
to
stand
in
a
circle.
Marten
asked
Jorge
to
bless
the
ceremony
in
the
name
of
his
Central
American
Indigenous
ancestors.
Those
few
not
joining
the
sweat,
myself
included,
took
supporting
roles
that
ranged
from
guarding
the
lodge
entrance
to
cooking
and
preparing
for
dinner
in
the
house.
After
the
ritual
ended,
participants
retired
to
the
house
to
drink
water
and
eat;
some
brought
out
drums
for
a
spontaneous
jam
session.
As
I
moved
through
this
crowd,
it
struck
me
that
the
event
had
lifted
Marten's
spirits,
even
as
it
clearly
inspired
many
Radical
Faeries.
Some
spoke
about
how
this
retreat
into
Native
religion
had
bonded
them
together
or
brought
them
closer
to
a
sense
of
gay
nature.
One
spoke
his
hope
that
the
local
Radical
Faeries
would
honor
what
Marten
had
shared
by
hosting
another
time
a
"faerie
lodge"
as
a
new
method
to
explore
gay
spirituality.
The
idea
circulated
enough
in

220
conversation
that
some
people
went
home
that
night
thinking
that
Marten's
departure
might
not
mean
this
would
be
the
last
such
event
they
would
enjoy.

The
evening's
end
highlighted
the
ease
with
which
Radical
Faeries-in
each
case,
white
gay
men-casually
appropriated
Native
cultural
and,
specifically,
religious
practices
as
routes
to
discovering
their
own
Indigenous
gay
nature.
This
was
compatible
with,
and
depended
on,
Marten's
occupying
the
distinct
social
location
of
a
Two-Spirit
man
within
an
extant
Native
American
community.
Yet
Marten
also
asserted
this
distinction,
differently,
by
having
approached
Radical
Faeries
not
as
one
of
them,
but
as
their
friend,
and
with
the
purpose
of
defying
homophobia
by
reaffirming
his
connection
to
the
traditions
of
his
people
and
his
religious
leadership
as
a
TwoSpirit
person.
He
did
this
through
the
traveling
ritual
form
of
the
sweat
lodge,
which
already
linked
to
his
tribe
on
the
Great
Basin's
edge
through
long-standing
routes
of
cultural
exchange,
even
as
it
had
gained
renewed
significance
in
its
recent
circulation
within
pantribal
Native
religious
and
health
movements.
Marten's
role
as
a
spiritual
leader
and
the
tools
he
used
to
practice
it
announced
historical,
not
primordial,
ties
among
Native
peoples.
In
turn,
the
pantribal
qualities
of
the
ritual
enabled
him
to
form
a
connection
with
Jorge
and
affirm
each
other's
Indigenous
heritage
across
Jorge's
potential
exclusion
from
this
when
racialized
as
Latino.
Marten
thus
negotiated
Radical
Faerie
interests
in
him
toward
his
own
ends,
even
if
his
choosing
to
do
so
presented
Radical
Faeries
with
an
opportunity
to
turn
his
interests
toward
theirs.
Marten
made
Radical
Faerie
desires
a
context
for
negotiating
his
marginality
as
a
Native
gay
man
in
Native
society
by
attempting
to
hold
non-Native
gay
men
responsible
to
his
traditional
religious
leadership
while
drawing
other
gay
men
of
Indigenous
American
heritage
into
shared
roles.

Near
the
end
of
my
research,
friendships
among
Radical
Faeries
and
Native
gay
men
nurtured
collaborations
that
were
situated
by
assertions
of
Native

221
sovereignty.
For
example,
when
Harry
Hay
in
his
advanced
age
received
recognitions
from
people
who
long
had
held
him
in
respect,
they
included
a
public
gesture
from
Clyde
Hall.
In
honor
of
Hay's
life
and
work,
Hall
offered
to
lead
the
Naraya
with
other
Shoshone
and
Native
dance
leaders
at
the
Wolf
Creek
sanctuary
in
1999.
This
event
was
not
advertised
as
a
Radical
Faerie
gathering;
those
who
attended
were
admitted
on
Hall's
approval.
Despite
my
involvement
with
Radical
Faeries
in
California,
I
and
others
heard
nothing
about
the
Naraya
being
danced
at
Wolf
Creek
until
after
it
had
happened.
Even
then,
I
was
struck
by
how
little
we
were
told:
casual
references
seemed
thirdhand,
or
arose
only
while
discussing
other
topics.
I
found
this
especially
surprising
given
the
event's
significance
as,
to
my
knowledge,
the
first
time
a
Radical
Faerie
sanctuary
had
hosted
TwoSpirit
people
in
a
religious
ceremony
currently
practiced
within
a
Native
nation.
Given
that
this
could
represent
for
Radical
Faeries
a
fulfillment
of
what
so
many
desired,
something
seemed
to
have
shifted
in
its
narration.
I
heard
that
the
dance
leaders
had
stated
that
the
dance
was
not
being
given
to
Radical
Faeries
to
practice
or
to
inspire
any
other
invention.
By
joining,
participants
respected
the
Shoshone
and
other
Native
dance
leaders
by
honoring
the
dance
as
sacred
and
not
for
discussion
or
repetition
outside
of
that
space.
As
a
result,
for
the
first
time,
I
heard
among
Radical
Faeries
an
articulate
silence
about
a
quality
of
Native
culture
that
they
desired.
I
also
noticed
increased
discussion
among
Radical
Faeries
about
their
being
nonNatives
who
bore
a
responsibility
to
Native
people
not
to
usurp
Native
culture.
This
sharply
contrasted
with
the
ongoing
practice
of
gathering,
which
still
promised
Radical
Faeries
access
to
Indigenous
gay
nature
by
adopting
anything
anyone
met
and
shared
that
suggested
it.
Similarly,
identifying
as
non-Natives
responsible
to
Native
people
did
not
stop
Radical
Faeries
from
desiring
to
experience
Native
culture;
if
anything,
being
invited
to
participate
and
accepting
this
invitation
affirmed
that
desire.
But
these
Radical
Faerie
qualities
did
arise
on
new
terms:
as
acts
by
non-Natives

222
accountable
to
Native
people
asserting
sovereignty
over
Native
culture
within
t h e
power
relations
of
a
settler
colonial
society.
Whether
or
not
Radical
Faeries
recognized
its
implications,
their
call
to
accountability
positioned
them
in
a
new
relationship
to
life
on
Native
land.
From
a
naturalized
non-Native
formation
pursuing
colonial
desires
through
theses
of
Native
disappearance
and
transcendence,
Radical
Faeries
became
a
project
marked
as
nonNative
in
a
settler
society
that
needed
to
situate
its
definitions
of
Native
culture
in
relation
to
Native
interlocutors.
I
am
not
suggesting
that
Radical
Faerie
cultural
practices
changed
fundamentally.
Rather,
these
moments
appear
to
be
signs
of
a
potential
epistemic
shift,
in
relation
to
which
present
and
future
accounts
may
ask
to
what
extent
a
responsibility
to
Native
work
for
decolonization
leads
to
troubling
colonial
desires
for
queerness,
modernity,
or
indigeneity
or
to
denaturalizing
the
relationship
of
Radical
Faeries
to
settlement.

I
recount
these
events
to
emphasize
that
whatever
relationships
or
effects
they
denote
arose
when
Radical
Faeries
and
Native
gay
men
negotiated
their
nonidentical
work
within
conversations
on
"friendship."
While
Radical
Faerie
culture
views
Two-Spirit
as
a
primordial
and
desired
cultural
difference,
Native
gay
men
differentiate
themselves
by
grounding
their
lives
in
the
defense
of
Native
nations
and
the
pursuit
of
decolonization,
even
in
their
closest
and
most
"friendly"
interactions
with
Radical
Faeries.
Holding
Radical
Faeries
accountable
to
this
does
nothing
necessarily
to
address
or
question
the
colonial
desires
motivating
their
relationship
or
shaping
their
work
with
Native
gay
men.
Nevertheless,
whatever
other
effects
were
produced
by
their
interactions,
they
arose
when
Native
gay
and
Two-Spirit
men
pursued
traditional
leadership
as
Two-Spirit
people
in
their
nations
and
in
broader
Native
alliances.
In
this
context,
even
Marten's
and
Hall's
efforts
to
contact
Radical
Faeries
announced
their
prior
and
primary
adherence
to
a
responsibility
as
Two-Spirit
men
to
the
survival
and
decolonization
of
Native

223
communities.
This
divergence
in
the
grounding,
articulation,
and
effects
of
Radical
Faerie
and
Two-Spirit
practices
marks
their
meetings
as
moments
in
larger
conversations
articulating
non-Native
and
Native
queer
subjects
within
the
power
relations
of
ongoing
settler
colonialism.

224
SETTLER
COLONIALISM
CONDITIONS
TIIE
GLOBAL
PROJECTIONS
Of
U.S.
queer
modernities.
In
the
context
of
white
settler
society,
queer
projects
propose
a
global
scope
by
naturalizing
their
inheritance
of
settlement
and
then
projecting
a
desired
indigeneity
worldwide.
This
configuration
of
settler
colonial
and
global
power
is
informed
by
queer
theories
of
coloniality
and
globalization,
but
the
specificity
of
settler
colonialism
has
not
yet
been
theorized.
Scholars
have
portrayed
Western
queer
projects
as
a
(neo)colonial
globalizing
force
dominating
local
sexualities,
or
postcolonial
queers
as
distinctly
engaging
colonial
legacies
and
Western
politics
without
being
assimilated.'
Transnational
feminist
and
queer
diasporic
critics
trace
how
local
creativity
and
global
constraints
cause
colonial
complicities
to
be
inherent
to
queer
postcoloniality
even
while
inciting
critical
agency.'
These
readings
meaningfully
inform
an
account
of
settler
colonialism
and
queer
modernities
while
being
resituated.
The
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
results
from
global
political
and
economic
processes,
which
displace
Native
peoples
in
diasporas
on
Native
lands,
and
form
a
transnational
proving
ground
within
settler
societies
to
produce
a
white
settler
state
for
imperial
projection
abroad.
In
this
context,
non-Native
queer
modernities
reconcile
to
settlement
by
incorporating
Native
history
as
aspects
of
a
general
primitivity,
while
transcending
this
through
settler
citizenship's
civilizational

225
advancements.
These
acts
grant
non-Native
queers
a
global
purview,
by
projecting
them
along
the
twinned
global
scales
of
primitive
roots
and
civilizational
futures,
all
of
which
return
them
to
negotiating
their
settler
colonial
inheritance
of
Native
culture
and
land.
Native
critics
recognize
queer
globalisms
as
settler
colonial
projects.
Making
indigeneity
a
cipher
for
the
global
hegemonies
of
borderless
subjects
positions
Native
peoples
in
the
past
so
that
settlers
can
inherit
a
globalized
world
in
which
settler
colonialism
remains
naturalized.
In
contrast,
Native
queer
activists
formed
movements
along
linked
national
and
transnational
routes
that
draw
Natives
and
non-
Natives
into
solidarities
amid
the
power
relations
of
settler
colonialism
and
the
globalizations
that
it
conditions.

The
formation
of
U.S.
queer
projects
as
simultaneous
arbiters
of
colonial
and
global
power
is
explained
by
Jasbir
Puar's
critique
of
homonationalism.
Puar
indicates
that
U.S.
queer
subjects
marshal
the
civilizational
project
of
national
whiteness
to
project
(neo)colonial
rule
over
queered
subjects
and
populations
worldwide,
in
an
analysis
anticipated
and
affirmed
by
the
work
of
Jacqui
Alexander
and
Katie
King.3
Such
work
inspires
my
efforts
to
mark
homonationalism
as
a
settler
colonial
project,
within
an
analysis
that
scholars
can
pursue
in
at
least
two
directions.
In
one,
we
may
ask
how
U.S.
queer
projections
of
national
whiteness
perform
settler
colonialism,
by
making
human
rights,
tourism,
or
the
media
global
arenas
to
assert
or
protect
queer
embrace
by
the
settler
state,
or
to
form
relationships
to
queer
subjects
worldwide
that
recapitulate
colonial
logics.
I
am
interested
in
such
accounts,
but
I
wish
to
complement
such
theories
of
civilizational
queer
globalism
in
another
direction
by
examining
globalism's
appearance
within
primitivity.
U.S.
queer
modernities
become
homonationalist
in
the
horizon
of
settler
politics
by
adapting
the
oppositionality
of
indigeneity
to
argue
queer
belonging
to
sexual
modernity
and
settler
citizenship.
In
this
process,
"civilizationalism"
and
"primitivism"
are
complementary
inflections
of
colonial
modernity
and
its

226
globalism.
Colonial
modernity
may
be
critiqued
by
targeting
its
civilizational
commitments,
but
its
processes
will
not
cease
so
long
as
commitments
to
primitivity
remain
unexamined.
Queers
can
align
with
primitivism
when
asserting
progressive
or
radical
opposition
to
homonationalism
as
conservatism.
But
in
an
analysis
of
settler
colonialism,
this
also
arises
within
the
political
horizon
of
a
settler
society.
When
acting
as
settlers,
queer
radicals
produce
homonationalist
effects
as
readily
as
the
political
conservatives
they
oppose.

I
examine
the
homonationalist
implications
of
queer
radicalism
by
adapting
Chela
Sandoval's
reading
of
late-modern
globalization
as
having
destabilized
the
modernist
foundations
of
"First
World
citizens
subjects,"
once
a
postmodern
economy
detaches
culture
from
essence
in
new
modes
of
circulation.'
In
this
context,
as
Philip
Deloria
also
explains,
indigeneity
circulates
among
counterculturists
as
a
site
of
political
oppositionality.s
Deloria
indicates
that
settler
primitivism
already
permits
liberating
indigeneity
from
specificity
to
let
settlers
reconcile
to
settlement.
Sandoval
locates
this
in
the
power
relations
of
late-modern
globalization,
where
queer
primitivists
become
homonationalist
by
pursuing
a
globalism
that
leaves
their
settler
formation
unexamined.
Their
politics
of
primitivity
then
generally
grants
modern
queers
a
means
to
engage
the
power
relations
of
globalization
by
reconciling
to
inheriting
settlement.
I
explain
multiple
histories
of
white
settler
queer
primitivism
as
modes
of
globalizing
U.S.
queer
modernities.
I
then
articulate
them
with
the
decolonial
work
of
diasporic
queers
of
color,
whose
creative
engagements
with
national
and
global
queer
liberations
engage
white
settler
queer
primitivism,
and
raise
the
question
of
how
they
disrupt
or
reinstate
its
settler
colonial
logic.
Transnational
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activism
clarifies
this
question
by
articulating
queer
politics
of
primitivity
so
as
to
displace
its
settler
colonial
logic,
while
inviting
potential
queer
allies
across
national
locations
into
transnational
solidarity
with
Native
queer
people.

227
Settler
Globalism
and
Oueer
Primitivism

Radical
Faeries
in
the
City

The
reputation
of
Radical
Faeries
as
icons
of
queer
primitivism
hinges
on
their
appearance
as
a
radical
fringe
to
queer
projects
that
border
on
assimilation
within
a
heteronormative
society.
Radical
Faeries
launch
this
critique
from
their
distinctive
proximity
to
rural
communalism.
Up
to
now
I
have
read
their
rural
ties
as
the
meaningful
center
of
a
shared
culture,
but
their
desires
for
rural
emplacement
read
more
complexly-for
Radical
Faeries
and
the
queer
spaces
they
intersect-once
they
are
known
to
have
originated
in
cities.
After
1979,
a
dispersal
of
participants
from
the
first
gathering
generated
regional
networks
in
or
near
the
urban
centers
where
most
participants
lived.
Here,
"faerie
circles"
planned
future
gatherings,
and
over
time
many
acquired
sanctuary
lands
to
support
them.'
Planning
gatherings
and
managing
sanctuaries
from
afar
sustained
Radical
Faerie
culture
over
the
long
periods
when
most
participants
lived
far
away
from
rural
life.
As
a
result,
a
critical
mass
of
practitioners
from
the
inception
of
Radical
Faerie
culture
experienced
it
primarily
as
an
urban
phenomenon.
In
the
process,
Radical
Faeries
in
cities
have
acted
much
like
other
queer
primitivists:
as
conduits
for
the
urban
queer
constituencies
from
which
they
are
drawn
and
in
which
they
live
to
discover
a
queer
indigeneity
thatI
now
emphasize-also
projects
a
global
purview
for
their
queer
cultures
and
politics.

While
practicing
ethnography
with
Radical
Faeries
in
the
San
Francisco
area,
I
came
to
see
how
participants'
urban
lives
made
sense
amid
stories
of
a
rural
base.
Radical
Faerie
narratives
suggest
that
authentic
gay
nature
realized
at
rural
gatherings
is
endangered
by
an
inauthenticity
in
urban
life.
In
cities,
Radical
Faeries
endeavor
to
sustain
a
shared
experience
understood
to
be
properly
realized
far
away,
even
while
they
extol
any
success
at
creating
it
in
a
context
that
appears
inimical
to
it.
But
if
they
do
succeed,
then
the
culture

228
they
create
becomes,
in
fact,
a
product
of
urban
life,
completing
a
circle
from
its
original
urban
imagining.
Radical
Faerie
subjectivity
thus
is
defined
by
perpetual
deferrals
of
its
creation
of
"rural"
culture
within
and
for
urban
space,
without
requiring
rural
retreat.
Urban
queers
tap
into
Radical
Faerie
identity
to
discover
all
that
the
rural
appears
to
signify
as
a
route
to
realizing
queer
nature.
On
this
basis,
I
understand
Radical
Faerie
subjectivity
to
produce
subjects
in
a
state
of
perpetual
transit
along
the
spatial
and
temporal
scales
of
modern
sexuality,
which
seeks
lost
origins
for
its
own
progress.
Those
scales
also
describe
a
globalized
world
of
primitive
sexual
and
gender
differences,
just
as
among
Radical
Faeries
in
the
United
States
they
reference
Native
roots
in
relation
to
which
queer
worlds
are
being
imagined.

In
large
and
small
cities
of
the
San
Francisco
Bay
Area,
I
met
Radical
Faerie
community
in
the
work
of
creating
the
ethos
of
rural
gathering
within
and
for
urban
life.
Radical
Faerie
culture
manifested
whenever
participants
met
one
another
or
their
friends
in
everyday
life.
I
often
ran
across
gay
men
whom
I
knew
from
gatherings
or
urban
circles
in
accidental
meetings
while
walking
the
streets
or
shopping
at
markets,
or
on
being
invited
to
lunch
or
dinner
by
local
groups
of
friends.
Common
experience
with
Radical
Faerie
culture
also
linked
many
gay
men
I
knew
in
shared
households
or
employment.
Radical
Faeries
often
brought
each
other
and
friends
out
to
experience
urban
queer
culture,
from
drag
productions
to
new
independent
films.
Each
summer
in
Santa
Cruz
in
the
mid-1990s,
a
fluctuating
network
of
gay
men
who
knew
one
another
from
Radical
Faerie
contexts
reconnected
at
a
weekly
gay
men's
beach
volleyball
event
advertised
in
local
queer
media.
In
San
Francisco's
Castro
district,
a
gay
man
friendly
to
Radical
Faeries
outfitted
his
house
as
a
space
for
sex
parties,
and
Radical
Faeries
from
the
region
were
among
those
who
regularly
attended
or
hosted
events.
On
my
first
visit
to
this
space,
I
was
struck
by
being
welcomed
at
the
door
by
two
twenty-something
men
sporting

229
brightly
dyed
punk
haircuts,
whom
up
to
then
I
had
known
only
from
gatherings
in
Tennessee,
but
who,
it
turned
out,
lived
nearby.
The
first
floor
of
this
house
brought
me
not
to
a
space
for
sex
but
to
well-lit
areas
for
conversation,
near
the
kitchen
vegetable-and-dip
tray
and
patio
hot
tub,
where
a
talkative
crowd
introduced
me
to
local
Radical
Faeries,
some
of
whom
I
did
not
yet
know.
In
cities
around
the
Bay
Area,
I
found
Radical
Faeries
among
the
invitees
to
annual
garden
parties
hosted
at
the
homes
of
well-connected
gay
men.
My
first
invitations
to
such
events
came
not
from
any
prior
link
to
their
hosts
but
from
gay
men
I
knew
from
Radical
Faerie
contexts.
Their
invitations
were
one
of
my
key
means
to
be
introduced
to
gay
men
prominent
in
regional
business,
electoral
politics,
and
nonprofit
organizing
whom
I
otherwise
might
not
have
known,
and
whose
work
crucially
informed
my
accounts
of
queer
politics
in
Santa
Cruz
and
the
San
Francisco
Bay
Area
more
broadly.

The
participation
of
Radical
Faeries
in
urban
queer
communities
included
taking
roles
in
joint
activism
and
investing
them
with
Radical
Faerie
values.
I
knew
many
Radical
Faeries
who
worked
as
social-service
professionals
in
city
or
county
health
departments,
or
as
businessmen
or
entrepreneurs,
and
who
took
public
leadership
roles
in
local
queer
activism.
Although
their
participation
was
not
dissimilar
from
that
of
their
colleagues,
theirs
reflected
Radical
Faerie
culture
if
they
critiqued
normative
qualities
of
urban
life
or
promoted
ancient
or
natural
spirituality
as
an
alternative.
Such
claims
grew
in
the
late
1990s
when
one
regional
faerie
circle
received
funds
to
host
a
summer
camp
for
queer
youth.
Framed
by
HIV
and
suicide
prevention
models
that
fostered
self-esteem,
the
hosts
presented
Radical
Faerie
culture
as
a
way
to
cultivate
a
healing
queer
identity
by
living
in
harmony
with
nature,
practicing
emotional
communication,
and
exploring
queer
spirituality.
Because
the
camp
required
sponsors
to
gain
insurance
coverage
through
the
local
LGBT
community
center,
sponsoring
the
faerie
camp
turned
this

230
particular
faerie
circle
from
what
had
been
an
ad
hoc
friendship
network
into
one
of
the
community
center's
formal
501c3
affiliate
organizations
authorized
to
provide
urban
social
services.
In
these
and
more
ways,
Radical
Faeries
created
their
culture
and
community
throughout
the
seasons
of
the
year
as
constitutive
parts
of
urban
queer
organizing,
and
at
times
as
key
representatives.

All
such
public
work
rested,
however,
on
urban
faerie
circles
sustaining
intimate
community
among
gay
men
and
their
friends.
Urban
faerie
circles
formed
an
infrastructure
that
recalled
and
shared
the
qualities
of
rural
gathering-self-love,
friendship,
mutual
aid,
and
natural
spirituality.
Yet
doing
so
in
urban
space
also
enabled
others
to
meet
Radical
Faerie
culture
for
the
first
time
while
enmeshed
in
urban
life.
Heart
circle
notably
served
this
role
in
the
Bay
Area.
When
Radical
Faeries
told
me
of
their
difficulty
in
sustaining
the
culture
of
gatherings
year-round,
I
regularly
heard
a
wish
for
more
regular
practice
of
heart
circle.
Heart
circle
functioned
like
a
portable
gathering,
and
more
than
any
other
factor
I
found
that
its
practice
shifted
faerie
circles
from
being
relatively
dissociated
networks
into
cohesive
groups
grounded
in
common
work
to
change
themselves
and
society.
Regular
practice
of
heart
circle
in
the
city
affected
how
gay
men
lived
Radical
Faerie
identity,
if
this
made
rural
retreat
unnecessary
to
experience
the
culture's
heart.
Newcomers
to
urban
heart
circles
sometimes
later
claimed
Radical
Faerie
identity
by
naming
their
interest
to
attend
rural
gatherings.
Yet,
others
I
met
were
satisfied
to
have
found
in
urban
community
the
center
or
full
extent
of
their
Radical
Faerie
identification.
Certainly,
in
relation
to
a
twohour
weekday
evening
heart
circle
in
the
living
room
of
an
urban
house,
rural
gatherings
carried
a
far
greater
capacity
for
spatial
and
temporal
displacement
of
urban
gay
men
into
an
indigenized
rural
communalism
and
its
promised
encounter
with
queer
nature.
Yet
the
very
success
of
regular
heart
circle
in
sustaining
the
sensibility
associated
with
rural
gathering
over
long
periods
of
time
in
urban

231
life
let
both
old-timers
and
newcomers
realize,
or
even
entirely
locate,
their
experience
of
Radical
Faerie
culture
in
the
city.
In
this
light,
faerie
circles
indicate
that,
despite
suggestions
that
they
only
echo
rural
retreat,
the
experience
promised
by
the
Radical
Faerie
founders
ultimately
did
not
require
it.
If
the
ethos
of
rural
gathering
can
arise
apart
from
rural
space,
then
even
it
can
appear
to
be
a
formulation
of
urban
life.
On
this
basis,
I
understand
Radical
Faerie
rural
imaginaries
and
their
practice
to
be
constituted
by
urban
desires,
apropos
not
so
much
to
the
rural
sites
where
they
transpire
or
that
they
invoke
as
to
the
urban
spaces
where
they
were
proposed
and
are
sustained.
By
arguing
that
the
city
interrupts
an
experience
that,
in
fact,
urban
conditions
produce,
Radical
Faeries
occlude
their
own
formation
within
urban
queer
communities
and
simultaneously
motivate
their
perpetual
retreat
to
rural,
natural,
and
Indigenous
sources
to
realize
queer
nature.

I
have
explained
Radical
Faerie
culture
as
a
method
to
produce
modern
queers
as
transhistorical
and
global
subjects
by
reconciling
them
to
inheriting
settlement.'
Yet,
when
read
as
a
product
of
urban
queer
life,
Radical
Faerie
globalism
appears
less
as
the
countercultural
fringe
of
their
common
reputation
and
more
as
a
primary
and
constitutive
expression
of
the
primitivist
and
globalist
desires
endemic
within
the
everyday
political
and
cultural
practice
of
U.S.
queer
modernities.
After
all,
Radical
Faeries
are
the
modern
queer
subjects
who
benefit
from
Radical
Faerie
culture-alongside
all
who
tap
into,
learn
from,
or
pass
through
their
activities
without
identifying
with
them.
Just
as
strongly
Faerie-identified
gay
men
participated
fully
in
urban
queer
life
without
naming
a
subcultural
identity,
other
participants
in
queer
cultures
and
politics
could
recognize
Radical
Faerie
culture
as
part
of
the
diversity
of
queer
communities.
Without
requiring
that
participants
assume,
or
even
fully
comprehend,
theories
of
Indigenous
queer
nature,
Radical
Faerie
culture
attracts
a
generic
belief
that
something
substantive
underlies
queer
subjectivity

232
and
that
Radical
Faeries
are
among
its
arbiters.
If
observers
or
friends
ever
accept
Radical
Faerie
education
in
mediating
modern
sexuality
with
rural,
natural,
or
Indigenous
truth,
they
bear
no
responsibility
for
explaining
their
desires
so
long
as
self-identified
Radical
Faeries
appear
to
be
its
proper,
"subcultural"
subjects.
Thus,
rather
than
reading
them
as
a
social
fringe,
I
understand
them
as
positioned
within
queer
communities,
but
their
primitivism
to
be
just
far
enough
"outside"
queer
modernities
(while,
obviously,
produced
inside
them)
that
Radical
Faerie
culture
then
can
grant
queers
solace,
from
time
to
time,
in
knowing
that
an
Indigenous
nature
actually
underlies
the
progressive
modernism
driving
queer
politics.

Although
my
thoughts
on
the
politics
of
queer
primitivism
extend
beyond
the
Radical
Faeries,
I
first
considered
its
political
usage
by
witnessing
how
Radical
Faeries
participated
in
Santa
Cruz
queer
politics
in
1999.
As
we
saw
in
chapter
3,
this
was
a
period
of
reckoning
with
race
at
the
downtown
Santa
Cruz
LGBT
Community
Center,
as
a
shift
from
grassroots
organizing
to
foundation-funded
social
services
elicited
a
reevaluation
of
the
center's
historical
whiteness.
Even
after
it
was
renamed
the
Diversity
Center,
struggles
over
race,
class,
and
citizenship
continued
to
embroil
Santa
Cruz
city
politics
more
broadly.
A
new
city
council
majority
led
by
a
slate
of
progressive
white
male
councilors
recently
had
come
under
criticism
for
their
proposed
solution
to
a
fiscal
crisis.
Their
support
for
the
Santa
Cruz
Beach
Boardwalk's
expansion
would
have
allowed
redevelopment
of
the
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
working-class
neighborhood
of
Beach
Flats-the
same
neighborhood
through
which
Queer
Nation
Santa
Cruz
first
marched.
Activists
locally
and
countywide
scrutinized
this
contradiction
in
the
council's
image
as
a
force
for
inclusion
of
marginalized
people.
During
this
conflict,
two
council
members
(one
from
this
progressive
slate)
were
recognized
for
their
support
for
LGBT
civil
rights
by
being
invited
to
be
grand
marshals
of
the
1999
pride
parade,
whose
theme
that
year
was
"Celebrate
Diversity."
At
the
pride
parade,
I
noted

233
this
alliance
among
progressive
leaders
of
two
historically
white
institutions
facing
crises
over
their
racialization
and
commitment
to
"diversity"
in
other
than
name
only.
As
the
parade
marched
through
downtown
Santa
Cruz
to
a
festival
near
the
county
government
building,
I
also
thought
about
these
issues
in
relation
to
the
participation
of
Radical
Faeries,
which
inflected
the
event's
civilizational
appeals
to
queer
citizenship
with
queer
primitivity.

I
stood
that
day
in
a
sidewalk
crowd
near
the
center
of
downtown,
shaded
by
the
trees
near
one
of
the
city's
two
gay
bars,
and
opposite
an
upscale
natural
foods
market.
Many
contingents
calmly
marched
by
in
casual
business
dress
holding
banners
and
signs
representing
social-service
agencies
or
LGBT
affinity
groups;
these
received
sporadic
bouts
of
applause
from
the
spectators.
They
were
interspersed
at
times
with
slightly
more
raucous
crowds
of
school-
based
student
groups.
In
this
array,
I
and
others
who
stood
near
me
began
to
hear
the
unusual
echoes
of
drums
before
we
could
see
their
players.
After
queries
of,
"What
is
that?"
word
began
spreading:
Its
the
faeries!"
Behind
a
group
of
orderly
walkers,
we
saw
twenty
to
thirty
people
holding
hands
and
skipping
in
a
long,
meandering
line
up
the
street
toward
us.
They
appeared
to
be
a
group
of
men,
most
bare-chested,
a
colorful
few
in
skirts
or
festooned
with
scarves,
jewelry,
headdresses,
face
paint,
or
bells.
Their
pace
increased
to
the
beat
of
djembes
and
tablas
being
played
behind
them,
and
punctuated
from
time
to
time
with
ululations.
Behind
their
line
appeared
similarly
attired
drummers
seated
in
the
back
of
a
pedaled
rickshaw,
which
I
recognized
as
an
import
from
Southeast
Asia
now
decorated
in
bright
colors
and
an
eclectic
melange
of
images,
statuary,
and
organic
objects
intimating
neo-pagan
and
Buddhist
spirituality.
After
nearly
an
hour
of
staid
marching
and
soft
applause,
I
sensed
the
heightened
energy
around
me
in
the
broad
smiles
being
shared
by
witnesses
and
the
many
photographs
being
snapped.
As
the
only
contingent
to
eschew
the
seeming
transparency
of
signs
and
slogans,
the
group
invited
its
own
interpretation.
I
asked
people
around
me
how
the
dancers
appeared
to

234
them,
and
one
remarked
that
they
were
communicating
"the
joy
of
being
gay."
Another
near
me
spontaneously
announced,
"They
sure
know
how
to
have
fun!"
Later
that
afternoon
I
ran
into
an
old
friend,
a
white
woman
professional
active
in
local
lesbian
and
bisexual
organizing.
On
rushing
up
to
see
me,
her
years
of
honoring
Radical
Faeries
as
men
who
publicly
critiqued
sexism
and
homophobia
echoed
in
her
excited
words:
"Weren't
the
faeries
fabulous?!"
Here
she
echoed
a
Radical
Faerie
marching
chant
heard
at
a
prior
generation
of
ACT-UP
marches
and
pride
parades,
with
syllables
punctuated
by
staccato
claps:
"fae-ries
are
fab-a-lous
...
faeriesarefabulous!"

Indeed,
the
Radical
Faerie
contingent
that
year
was
a
fabulous
alternative
to
the
parade's
civilizational
appeals
to
civic
recognition.
Yet
my
interest
here
is
in
how
the
image
they
presented
to
onlookers
functioned
as
part
of
the
celebrated
progress
of
modern
queer
politics.
I
recognized
many
old
friends
and
acquaintances
among
the
contingent's
dancers,
but
participants
in
civic
politics
and
queer
activism
in
this
small
city
also
would
have
recognized
many
dancers
from
those
contexts.
The
group
never
named
themselves
"Radical
Faeries,"
but
had
this
read
onto
them
by
witnesses
with
prior
knowledge
of
their
not-unexpected
appearance
within
the
diversity
of
local
queer
community.
That
so
many
participants
should
depart
wildly
from
an
orderly
march
marked
an
awareness
that
in
this
space,
queer
cultural
citizenship
can
be
affirmed
through
more
than
civilizational
performance.
Santa
Cruz,
like
San
Francisco,
differs
from
most
U.S.
cities
in
its
civic
embrace
of
counterculturism;
but
the
scene
carries
a
deeper
implication.
We
see
here
that
invoking
primitivism
in
queer
cultural
citizenship
practices
can
buttress
progressive
claims
on
queer
modernity,
as
one
guise
that
its
representatives
may
assume
when
appealing
for
recognition.
By
performing
global
cultural
ephemera
and
Indigenous
queer
nature,
queer
primitivism
makes
normatively
white
communities
appear
more
culturally
diverse
than
if
they
were
only

235
represented
by
the
performance
of
civilizational
achievement.
Homonormative
politics
struggles
to
edit
drag,
S/M,
and
public
sex
out
of
the
publicity
surrounding
gay
rights,
as
at
pride
parades.
Gender
and
sexual
radicals
may
think
they
win
this
battle
if
they
sustain
an
unapologetic
public
presence.
But
as
part
of
Pride
1999's
progressive
effort
to
celebrate
"diversity,"
Radical
Faeries
appeared
less
as
a
protest
of
modernist
claims
on
cultural
citizenship
and
more
as
their
primitivist
complement
and
affirmation.

I
knew
that
this
year,
and
in
the
years
immediately
before
and
after
it,
the
Santa
Cruz
Faerie
circle
increased
its
participation
in
pride
events
to
raise
its
profile
as
a
contributor
to
local
queer
civic
and
cultural
life.
With
changing
themes
each
year,
the
group
worked
to
validate
their
integrity:
by
acknowledging
participants,
many
of
them
major
local
figures,
in
the
guise
of
their
primary
identity;
by
showing
that
their
culture
was
sustained
by
a
closely
knit
circle;
and
by
inviting
onlookers
to
witness
the
pleasure
and
freedom
granted
by
Radical
Faerie
culture.
These
sentiments
did
not
differ
markedly
from
participants'
everyday
participation
in
local
queer
life.
Thus,
the
politics
of
primitivity
for
Radical
Faeries
appeared
simply
to
fulfill
a
thesis
of
Radical
Faerie
culture:
inviting
not
just
gay
men,
but
all
queer
people,
to
seek
out
and
be
liberated
by
their
Indigenous
queer
nature.
Thus,
I
read
Radical
Faerie
participation
at
Pride
1999
as
a
familiar
sentimentgrounding
queer
modernities
in
queer
inadvertently,
or
inevitably,
caught
up
in
the
racial
and
national
contours
of
queer
citizenship
practices.
Radical
Faeries
participated
just
as
queer
activists
and
the
government
in
which
they
sought
belonging
struggled
with
the
whiteness
of
their
progressive
politics
while
trying
to
assure
of
their
own
diversity.
Pride
organizers
called
on
people
to
celebrate
diversity,
and
announced
that
they
supported
multiculturalism
even
as
they
positioned
queer
culture
as
a
form
of
diversity.
Their
claim
on
citizenship
then
informed
a
city
council
whose
image
as
a
protector
of
diversity
needed
reinforcement.
At
the
parade,
the
council
accepted
appreciation
from
a
predominantly
white

236
queer
constituency,
while
celebrating
the
city
as
diverse
in
a
way
that
did
not
challenge
its
policies
in
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
communities.
Whiteness
in
queer
politics
and
civic
government
thus
was
sustained
by
presuming
their
own
diversity.
In
this
context,
the
Radical
Faeries'
presence,
however
fleeting,
was
absorbed
into
a
message
that
queers
celebrate
diversity.
Whether
their
performance
was
meant
to
be
or
was
perceived
as
"fringe,"
it
became
inserted
in
this
moment
into
the
political
norms
of
a
white
settler
society.
Radical
Faeries
presented
a
rare
group
that
truly
did
"celebrate"
diversity,
in
the
primitivity
they
offered
modern
queer
subjects
to
appreciate
or
adopt.
Their
performance
then
informed
queer
and
broader
civic
desires
for
a
multicultural
modernity
that
was
challenged
by
their
normative
whiteness,
but
perhaps
ameliorated
by
this
reminder
that,
after
all,
we
are
everywhere."
Celebrating
queer
diversity
through
primitivity
invited
witnesses
to
excavate
deep
pasts
and
cross
distant
borders
in
hopes
of
confirming
roots
on
this
land
that
also
promise
present
and
future
forms
of
national
and
global
belonging.

Queer
Primitivist
Globalizations

Beyond
the
work
of
any
particular
subculture,
U.S.
queer
cultural
politics
in
the
1990s
engaged
primitivism
as
a
leading
edge
of
queer
radicalism.
I
witnessed
this
amid
the
established
appeal
of
San
Francisco
to
counterculturists.
European
neo-paganism
had
gained
local
legitimacy
after
decades
of
work
by
Starhawk's
Reclaiming
Collective,
among
other
regional
institutions.
Vibrant
art
scenes
drew
on
pagan
themes
to
transform
a
late-
1 9 8 0 s
San
Francisco
beach
gathering
into
the
annual
Nevada
desert
extravaganza
Burning
Man
with
its
tens
of
thousands
of
celebrants.'
A
local
confluence
of
radical
sex
and
body
modification
scenes
in
the
late
1980s
inspired
journalists
to
proclaim
the
era
of
"modern
primitives,"
which
soon
seemed
to
command
a
global
scope.9
None
of
these
formations
contradicted
San
Francisco's
status
as
a
global
finance
capital
or
destination
for
the
world's

237
rich
and
famous;
indeed,
counterculturisms
of
many
kinds
augmented
the
city's
founding
myth
of
Gold
Rush
frontier
bohemianism
that
let
it
lead
settler
modernity
by
incorporating
and
managing
the
wild
edge
of
civilization.
Queer
primitivists
informed
this
space,
whether
they
arose
here
or
were
drawn
as
migrants,
by
mobilizing
primitivism
as
a
form
of
queer
radicalism
wherein
non-
Natives
applied
their
inheritance
of
indigeneity
to
incite
queer
liberation
at
home"
and
throughout
a
globalized
world.
If
their
queering
of
embodiment
or
desire
gained
recognition
or
affirmation
in
queer
theory,
then
primitivism
and
its
globalism
constituted
the
cutting
edge
of
queer
modernities
serving
non-Natives
within
the
naturalized
context
of
a
settler
society.

In
the
1990s,
visitors
seeking
San
Francisco's
libertinism
might
have
encountered
one
of
the
Castro
district's
largest
annual
events
at
the
time:
the
Halloween
Party
sponsored
by
the
Sisters
of
Perpetual
Indulgence.
Founded
to
raise
funds
for
HIV/AIDS
services,
the
event
celebrated
drag
and
sexuality
at
a
nighttime
street
fair
and
costume
party.
In
1994,
local
artists
addressed
increased
homophobic
and
transphobic
violence
during
the
event
by
mobilizing
art
activism.
"HomoHex"
was
formed
by
Keith
Hennessy,
cofounder
of
the
queer
arts
collective
848
Community
Space,
and
by
Jack
Davis,
associate
of
848
and
a
practitioner
in
Reclaiming
Collective.
As
a
public
form
of
contact
improvisation
and
neo-pagan
ritual
invoking
those
lost
to
AIDS,
HomoHex
would
re-create
the
Halloween
Party
as
a
challenge
to
heteropatriarchy
and
pandemic.
Hennessy
described
Homo-
Hex
participants
as
"body-based
and
polydisciplined
life
artists"
who

come
primarily
from
the
urban
cliques
of
radical
faeries,
artists,
anarchopagans,
and
queer
sex
activists.
We
act
and
write
and
pray
from
our
specific
bodies,
and
from
the
communal
body.
We
...
embrace
queer
and
feminist
leadership,
pagan
rituals,
consensual
explorations
of
power,
and
dance-based
trainings
in
intentional
touch
...
We
are
protesting
and

238
 praying
and
performing,
simultaneously,
as
we
have
always
done.10

At
the
1994
Halloween
Party,
nearly
one
hundred
people
marched
through
crowds
on
Market
Street
chanting,
"Dyke
Sex!
Fag
Sex!
Were
here
to
throw
a
HomoHex!
WHEE!"
(14).
Part
of
the
group
linked
arms
in
a
circle
and
edged
back
the
crowd
to
create
a
space
where
performers/celebrants
stripped
off
their
clothes
and
leaders
proclaimed
the
establishment
of
a
sacred
circle.
As
Davis
recalls:

There
is
wild
drumming,
mad
dancing
with
kissing,
pelvic
humping,
whole
body
hugging,
naked
bodies
thrown
into
the
air...
There
are
hundreds
of
people
watching
us.
There
are
untold
numbers
of
ancestors
present.
We
are
worshipping
in
the
old
way:
naked,
doing
sex
play
outdoors,
near
midnight
on
Halloween.
We
are
queer
witches
and
this
is
how
we
pray.
(16)

Here
Davis
strongly
echoes
Evans's
Witchcraft
and
the
Gay
Counterculture,
which
projected
sexual
spirituality
onto
all
"nature
peoples"
while
locating
U.S.
queers
within
a
European
legacy
of
"queer
witches"
as
sources
of
liberation.
Hennessy
further
asserts
that
with
AIDS
having
"instigated
a
more
developed
consciousness
in
relation
to
death,"
the
neo-pagan
rituals
of
Samhein
(Halloween)
allow
queers
to
recall
and
"gain
strength"
by
connecting
to
loved
ones
lost
to
the
epidemic
(15).
At
HomoHex,
queer
feminists
turned
a
night
when
the
worlds
of
the
living
and
the
dead
collide
into
a
site
where
primitivist
spirituality
performed
queer
politics,
by
mobilizing
the
dishonored
dead
to
empower
survivors
of
collective
trauma
in
renewing
their
defiance
of
heteronormative
violence
and
their
achievement
of
a
primal
queer
liberation.

Public
approbations
of
queer
primitivism
like
HomoHex
circulated
in
San
Francisco
during
this
time
in
the
manner
Sandoval
described,
as
a
postmodern
market
of
primitivist
consumption.
As
exemplified
by
the
Radical
Faeries,

239
queer
primitivism
broadly
informed
public
queer
cultures,
in
bookstores,
workshops,
performances,
and
in
community,
civic,
and
health
organizations.
For
instance,
regional
queer
feminist
women's
sexual
cultures
responding
to
antiporn
feminism
embraced
primitivism
as
a
route
to
sexual
agency,
by
welcoming
performers
like
Annie
Sprinkle,
whose
"Sluts
and
Goddesses"
workshops
narrated
a
world
of
sexual
and
spiritual
possibility
for
"exploring
the
different
sexual
personalities
inside
yourself,
and
accepting
them.""
Gay
men
inspired
by
globalist
visions
of
sexual
agency
formed
spaces
to
learn
safe
and
spiritual
sex,
as
when
Joseph
Kramer's
Oakland-based
Body
Electric
School
of
Massage
taught
sexual
and
spiritual
healing
by
linking
cultural
knowledges
from
around
the
world.
Workshops
like
Sprinkle's
and
Kramer's
became
available
at
local
marketplaces
like
Good
Vibrations,
a
woman-
centered
erotica
store
in
San
Francisco
and
Berkeley
founded
by
sexual
health
writer
Joani
Blank,
and
known
for
hosting
free
and
fee-based
events
promoting
sexual
exploration.
Texts
by
these
and
other
persons
and
groups
popularized
their
themes,
as
when
books
by
Radical
Faeries
on
gay
spirituality
were
promoted
as
resources
for
queer
communities
to
realize
their
potential.
One
local
project
in
wide
circulation
published
the
work
of
Randy
Connor,
David
Hatfield
Sparks,
and
Mariya
Sparks
as
Cassell's
Encyclopedia
of
Queer
Myth,
Symbol,
and
Spirit
(1997),
in
a
compendium
of
references
to
queer
primitivist
texts
and
other
literary
and
scholarly
sources
that
purportedly
recorded
the
existence
of
a
global
and
transhistorical
queer
spirituality.
Such
knowledges
and
practices
circulated
primitivism
to
remake
First
World
citizen-
subjects
as
modern
queers
liberated
by
grounding
borderless
lives
in
primal
truths.

Queer
primitivism
in
San
Francisco
overlapped
in
the
1990s
with
the
rise
of
the
phenomenon
of
"modern
primitives."
At
a
time
of
increasing
primitivist
cultural
activity
such
as
piercing,
tattooing,
and
body
modification,
V.
Vale
and
Andrea
Juno,
writing
from
San
Francisco
in
1989,
defined
it
as
the

240
cultural
moment
of
the
"modern
primitive."
They
projected
a
uniformity
across
disparate
activities
that
led
them
and
many
practitioners
to
recognize
the
qualities
of
a
movement.
In
his
study
of
modern
primitives,
Daniel
Rosenblatt
observes
that
if
tattooing,
piercing,
and
scarification
were
not
already
grouped
together,
they
certainly
became
so
after
Vale
and
Juno's
book."
He
notes
that

The
title
Modern
Primitives
makes
a
double
assertion.
First,
by
calling
people
who
practice
body
modification
"primitive,"
it
reflects
a
claim
that
what
people
are
doing
today
in
San
Francisco
and
elsewhere
bears
some
relation
to
things
that
non-Western
or
"primitive"
people
have
"always
done."
Second,
by
calling
them
"modern,"
it
asserts
that
they
are
on
the
cutting
edge
(so
to
speak)
of
our
own
or
the
world's
history."

The
spatial
relationship
Rosenblatt
frames
links
the
placeless,
past
worlds
of
primitives
to
the
modern
site
of
San
Francisco,
representing
here
the
West
that
transcends
primitivity
as
well
as
the
West
(or
"left")
Coast
whose
frontier
proximity
in
space
and
time
to
indigeneity
facilitates
recovering
primitivity.
Yet
this
formulation
also
denotes
a
white
racialization
of
modernity
and
primitivity
within
a
settler
society.
For
Vale
and
Juno,
the
modern
primitive
body
is
a
legibly
modern
body
whose
achievement
of
primitivity
is
remarkable
because
this
body
appears
not
to
have
been
racialized
as
primitive
prior
to
its
modification.
Modification
then
appears
as
a
modern
adaptation
of
"traditions"
of
modification
by
improving
on
their
skill
while
gathering
more
of
them
than
any
single
tradition
ever
knew.
We
are
not
surprised,
then,
to
encounter
the
iconic
modern
primitive
body
as
white,
although
in
San
Francisco
(and
not
only
there)
whiteness
as
a
product
of
settlement
is
known
to
inherit
Native
American
indigeneity
and
all
to
which
it
might
link.
This
normative
whiteness
of
modern
primitives
obscured
the
distinctive
participation
of
people
of
color.
For
instance,
Vale
and
Juno
portray
the

241
Japanese
teachers
of
Don
Ed
Hardy
as
racialized
and
modified
representatives
of
local
tradition
that
modern
primitives
now
adapt.
Yet
people
of
color
in
modern
primitive
communities
such
as
Tina
Portillo
and
Gryphon
Blackswan
challenged
such
terms
by
making
body
modification
assert
and
contradict
their
racialization
as
primitive,
notably
by
juxtaposing
diverse
markers
of
primitivity
that
displaced
the
overdetermination
of
their
bodies
within
a
white
gaze.13
Nevertheless,
the
complexity
and
marginality
of
their
efforts
indicates
that
whiteness
remained
naturalized
within
the
iconic
freedom
of
the
modern
primitive
to
assign
primitive
meaning
to
a
body
previously
empty
of
it,
which
potentially
let
it
represent
all
primitive
meanings
at
once.
In
its
San
Francisco
origins,
the
modern
primitive
economy
of
cultural
difference
caused
the
Indigenous
inheritance
of
white
settlers
to
perform
not
a
distinctive
Native
root
but
a
primitive
diversity
to
which
that
root
offered
access,
making
white
modern
primitives
both
quantitatively
and
qualitatively
more
Indigenous
than
any
specific
Indigenous
life
could
be.

Although
Vale
and
Juno
did
not
focus
on
gay
or
lesbian
practitioners,
modern
primitive
culture
drew
from
long-standing
uses
of
primitivism
to
blur
embodiment
and
pleasure
in
San
Francisco
gay
male
and
queer
radical
sex
scenes.
Building
from
BDSM
(bondage
and
discipline,
sadism
and
masochism)
and
leather
sex
subcultures
of
mid-twentieth-century
San
Francisco,
gay
radical
sex
practitioners
in
the
1970s
cited
gay
counterculturism
to
proclaim
a
grounding
in
primitivism.
Geoff
Mains,
in
his
1984
book
Urban
Aboriginals:
A
Celebration
of
Leathersexuality,
frames
BDSM
and
other
sexual
scenes
among
gay
men
as
a
"tribal
society"
where
spatial
concentrations
of
gay
eroticism
produce
spiritual
transformation.14
He
cites
the
work
of
Margaret
Mead
and
Ruth
Benedict
as
evidence
that
gender-segregated
ritual
spaces
and
shamanic
practices
in
primitive
societies
reappear
in
modern
gay
cultures
that
perform
them
as
their
nature
(160-63).
Yet
he
also
describes
leathermen
as
demonstrating
the
"fraternity,
equality,
liberty,
and
humility"
of
a
modern
and

242
egalitarian
national
brotherhood,
as
men
not
apart
from
but
of
the
very
blood
of
civilization";
indeed,
"urbane
and
savage
in
the
same
breath,
they
are
animal
and
human
in
the
same
stroke"
(179).
Here,
sexually
radical
gay
men
act
as
"a
bridge
between
two
worlds"
by
embodying
the
liminality
of
modernity
and
a
primitivity
indicative
of
white
settlers
and
modern
queers
(162,
180-81).
Radical
sex
cultures
increasingly
blurred
gender
and
sexual
boundaries
to
become
more
"queer,"
as
reflected
in
Mark
Thompson's
1991
collection
Leatherfolk:
Radical
Sex,
People,
Politics,
and
Practice.
Reflecting
recent
reassertions
of
radical
sex
by
lesbian
and
trans
practitioners
as
queer
feminist
methods
for
modifying
embodiment
and
pleasure,
Leatherfolk
under
Thompson's
guidance
nevertheless
emphasizes
a
Radical
Faerie
trajectory
of
reclaiming
primitive
"third
genders"
as
a
primal
nature
to
liberate
modern
queers.
Yet
the
text's
contributors
suggest
that
by
blurring
gender
and
sexuality,
radical
sex
transforms
narrower
theories
of
gay
nature
into
queer
liberations
that
exceed
preconceived
boundaries
of
embodiment
and
desire.

Modern
primitive
culture
in
San
Francisco
grew
through
ties
to
queer
radical
sex
culture,
notably
in
the
premier
regional
network
of
Black
Leather
Wings
(BLW).
BLW
is
profiled
in
Leatherfolk
as
a
pangendered
and
pansexual
radical
sex
fellowship
based
in
San
Francisco
with
members
from
across
the
United
States.
Formed
as
an
affinity
group
of
Radical
Faeries,
in
1989
it
was
disinvited
from
Wolf
Creek
after
a
heart
circle
process
determined
that
BDSM
was
violence
and
threatened
Radical
Faerie
community.
BLW
became
an
independent
San
Francisco
group
that
nevertheless
adapted
Radical
Faerie
methods
of
rural
retreat
and
heart
circle
to
radical
sex
practice
as
methods
to
tap
queer
people's
Indigenous
spiritual
nature.
Committed
practitioners
sustained
BLW
in
local
play
parties,
while
annual
retreats
drew
sixty
to
one
hundred
people,
many
of
them
casual
participants
who
carried
what
they
learned
back
to
regional
and
national
queer
communities.
When
I
first
met
BLW,
their
retreat
occurred
at
Saratoga
Springs,
a
center
founded
in
1871

243
on
Pomo
land
at
a
site
promoted
as
once
used
by
the
Pomo
for
peacemaking
and
healing...
the
valley
still
resonates
with
this
energy,
which
enhances
the
experiences
of
all
who
come.""

Soon
after
its
formation,
BLW
formed
a
close
relationship
with
a
key
figure
among
modern
primitives,
Fakir
Musafar.
Vale
and
Juno
profile
Musafar
as
an
icon
within
their
largely
heteronormative
framing
of
the
movement;
yet
Leatherfolk
also
profiled
Musafar
as
having
found
in
BLW
a
space
where
he
could
queer
his
embodiment
by
using
body
modification
to
blur
boundaries
of
male
and
female,
while
encouraging
his
interest
to
discover
the
spiritual
roots
of
his
practices."
Musafar
grew
up
under
the
given
name
Roland
Loomis
in
a
white
village
on
Lakota
land
in
South
Dakota.
From
a
young
age
he
explored
masochistic
practices,
from
corsets
to
genital
constraints,
although
he
took
particular
inspiration
from
pictures
of
"primitive
people"
in
National
Geographic
and
stories
of
Lakota
religious
ritual,
especially
the
Sun
Dance-a
practice
he
and
other
non-Natives
later
reenacted,
as
recorded
in
He
took
the
name
"Fakir
Musafar"
from
a
nineteenth-century
Persian
man
known
in
U.S.
body
modification
communities
for
living
adorned
with
pierced
hooks
and
beads.
Musafar
relocated
to
the
San
Francisco
region,
where
he
worked
by
day
as
an
investment
banker,
choosing
not
to
take
tattoos
or
piercings
that
could
be
seen
outside
business
dress,
and
used
his
resources
to
travel
to
learn
about
and
collect
instruments
of
body
modification
from
religious
practitioners
worldwide.
His
fame
in
regional
fetish
communities
often
brought
him
invitations
to
lead
their
rituals,
which
raised
the
profile
of
BLW
once
he
began
attending
their
retreats.
In
the
year
when
I
met
BLW,
Musafar
had
introduced
a
number
of
practices
to
their
repertoire,
including
a
structured
activity
based
on
his
study
of
Hindu
ritual
in
which
decorative
ornaments
are
affixed
to
the
torso
and
face
and
ritually
danced.
BLW
adopted
this
practice
as
the
ball
dance,"
and
the
day
devoted
to
it
formed
their
rural
retreat's
major
collective
event.

244
 Musafar's
modern
primitive
practice
converges
with
queer
primitivism,
as
he
taps
BLW's
spiritual
resources
to
queer
his
embodiment,
while
BLW
adapts
his
global
journeys
to
sustain
the
primitivist
desires
of
queer
radicalism.
Musafar's
story
suggests
that
settler
subjects
discover
their
desired
Native
American
indigeneity
simultaneously
with
its
global
extrapolations.
As
an
icon
of
modern
primitives,
he
performed
the
modern
primitive
as
a
subject
who
forms
and
returns
to
a
relationship
to
settlement
by
traversing
global
scales
of
primitivity
within
global
economics
of
cultural
appropriation
and
transformation.
Yet
this
globalist
primitivism
becomes
meaningful
only
on
its
return
to
the
settler
spaces
where
its
amalgamations
of
indigeneity
ground
modern
settlers
in
their
roots
on
Native
land.
Effectively,
in
a
settler
context,
the
global
is
accessible
from
the
ground
of
everyday
life:
global
imaginaries
are
settler
imaginaries,
projecting
Native
Americans
within
globalist
claims
for
reconciliation
to
settlement.
Queer
primitivism
thus
performs
a
mobility
across
time
and
space,
making
the
world
available
to
subjects
in
transit
between
the
modernity
and
primitivity
defining
the
lives
of
settlers
on
Native
land.

The
broad
inculcation
of
queer
primitivism
as
political,
cultural,
and
theoretical
radicalism
in
the
1990s
affirms
that
U.S.
queer
modernities
traverse
primitivity
as
a
route
to
modern
subjectivity.
While
queer
primitivists,
Radical
Faeries,
and
radical
sex
practitioners
clearly
present
themselves
as
subcultures
opposed
to
homonormativity
and
its
national
embrace,
they
remain
ciphers
of
the
sexual
modernity
performed
even
by
the
queers
they
critique.
Their
primitivism
oscillates
with
the
civilizationalism
that
they
target
to
produce
settler
subjects,
whose
liberation
depends
on
forming
a
relationship
to
the
indigeneity
they
appear
to
inherit
and
supplant
on
stolen
land.
Queer
primitivists
are
the
modern
subjects
who
turn
primitivity
into
a
resource
for
progressive
change
in
a
settler
society.
In
this
light,
radical
arenas
of
U.S.
queer
politics
and
queer
theory
should
be
reinterpreted
as
sites
that

245
produce
settler
subjects
and
their
globalist
projections.
To
what
degree
have
queer
theories
of
radical
sex
or
body
modification
invested
in
primitivity
to
perform
postmodernity-in
Sandoval's
or
Deloria's
senseas
the
act
of
modern
settlers
negotiating
a
colonial
inheritance?
How
is
queer
radicalism
produced
by
settler
colonialism
to
articulate
Native
American
indigeneity
and
its
globalist
and
primitivist
extrapolations
as
inspiration?
My
reading
complements
critiques
of
homonationalism
by
suggesting
that
homonationalism
arises
not
just
in
civilizational
alignments
of
queers
with
empire,
but
also
in
primitivist
critiques
of
heteronormativity
and
homonormativity
that
make
a
settler
relationship
to
indigeneity
constitutive
of
queer
radicalism.

Globalism,
Transnationalism,
and
Decolonization

Diasporic
queers
of
color
and
Native
queers
also
engage
the
settler
formation
of
globalism
in
queer
modernities.
Diasporic
queer
of
color
critiques
examine
how
colonial
histories
inform
their
traversal
and
disturbance
of
nationality
in
postcolonial
and
imperial
states.
But
the
efficacy
of
such
critiques
depends
on
the
degree
to
which
they
theorize
settler
colonialism
and
the
relationship
of
diasporic
queers
of
color
to
Native
queer
people.
Native
queer
critiques
disrupt
queer
globalism
precisely
by
locating
settler
colonialism
as
its
origin
and
context
on
stolen
land.
These
critiques
also
distinctly
engage
white
settler
queer
primitivism.
I
now
ask
how
queer
primitivist
globalism
inflects
diasporic
queer
of
color
critiques
in
ways
that
may
affirm
rather
than
challenge
settlement.
Chicano/a
queer
theories
in
particular
mark
the
porousness
among
Native
and
non-Native
queer
identities,
even
as
their
traversals
of
white
settler
queer
primitivism
potentially
replicate
a
colonial
relationship
to
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people.
Chicano/
a
queers
and
non-Native
queers
of
color
can
join
Two-Spirit
people
in
allied
relationship
to
transnational
Indigenous
movements
for
decolonization.
In
particular,
Two-

246
Spirit
activists
negotiate
white
settler
queer
primitivism
as
a
key
form
of
colonial
discourse
that
has
attempted
to
define
their
histories
and
purpose
for
settler
societies
and
the
colonial
world
they
engage.
By
holding
its
globalist
gestures
accountable
to
the
national
and
transnational
locations
of
Two-Spirit
people,
they
denaturalize
settler
colonialism
as
a
condition
of
theories
and
practices
of
queer
modernity,
and
they
inspire
new
transnational
alliances.

Queer
Diasporas
and
Indigenous
Solidarity

The
globalism
of
U.S.
queer
modernities
has
been
disrupted
by
queers
of
color
theorizing
diaspora.
Some
work
valorizes
queers
of
color
as
having
this
effect,
an
implication
questioned
by
Puar
who
locates
diasporic
queers
of
color
in
multiple
mediations
by
homonationalism.18
One
such
thread
implies
that
diasporic
cultural
practices
by
queers
of
color
disrupt
colonialism
and
its
legacies.
Centering
settler
colonialism
raises
the
stakes
in
making
such
a
claim.
A
focus
in
queer
diasporic
scholarship
on
recent
globalizations
and
migrations
has
framed
colonization
through
the
lens
of
the
postcolonial,
in
which
nationalisms,
migration,
and
global
governance
sustain
colonization's
"afterlife.""
Yet
a
troubling
effect
of
the
assertion
that
today
colonization
is
everywhere
is
that
scholars
do
not
place
colonization
itself
under
study
or
specify
its
forms.
One
result
is
to
elide
settler
colonialism
as
needing
no
afterlife
because
its
primary
form
never
ended.
As
a
result,
and
as
Indigenous
feminist
and
queer
critics
argue,
queer
diasporic
accounts
of
"colonialism"
tend
not
to
explain
the
colonial
formation
of
settler
societies,
or
the
locations
of
diasporic
queers
of
color
within
them
as
non-Natives
in
relation
to
Native
peoples.

Articulations
of
diasporic
queers
of
color
with
U.S.
settler
colonialism
can
be
elicited
from
current
scholarship.
Martin
Manalansan
explains
that
diasporic
Filipino
gay
men
challenge
their
colonial
locations
as
racially
premodern
in
relation
to
U.S.
queer
modernities
by
destabilizing
"a

247
monolithic
gay
identity,"
in
a
"counter-narrative
to
the
prevailing
view
of
the
immigrant
route
as
a
movement
away
from
tradition
in
the
homeland
and
toward
an
assimilated
modern
life
in
the
land
of
settlement.""'
When
Manalansan
affirms
an
alternative
form
of
modernity"
formed
by
Filipinos
negotiating
legacies
of
U.S.
colonization,
he
invites
asking
how
this
relates
in
"the
land
of
settlement"
to
white
settler
rule
relocating
and
marginalizing
Filipinos
as
occupants
of
Native
American
and
Kanaka
Maoli
lands.21
Interpreting
how
Filipino
gay
men
claim
transnational
identities
in
relation
to
Native
queer
diasporas
on
stolen
land
could
clarify
how
they
perform
queer
modernities
that,
by
defying
U.S.
colonial
modernity,
also
open
all
its
settler
colonial
power
to
question.

Juana
Rodriguez
deepens
such
themes
by
tracing
how
"queer
Latinidad"
troubles
U.S.
colonial
power
by
evaluating
settler
colonialism.
In
her
account,
the
San
Francisco
queer
Latino/a
AIDS
organization
Proyecto
Contra
SIDA
Por
Vida
defines
queer
Latino/a
diasporas
as
anticolonial
when
its
members
transpose
the
European
conquest
of
the
Americas
as
a
metaphor
for
the
U.S.
colonial
relationship
to
Latin
America.
In
doing
so,
Rodriguez
relates,
Proyecto
invokes
Latino/a
and
specifically
Chicano/a
queer
identifications
with
indigeneity.22
Longtime
Proyecto
organizer
Ricardo
Bracho
wrote
in
its
mission
statement,
"queremos
romper
el
silencio
y
repression
among
our
pueblos
who
for
500
years
have
been
colonized/
catholocized/de-
eroticized."
Here
Bracho
evokes
his
co-imagining
with
Cherrie
Moraga
of
a
"queer
Aztlan,"
in
which
claiming
erotic
belonging
to
Indigenous
heritage
defies
Chicano/a
internalizations
of
white
supremacy
and
colonial
discourse
while
invoking,
in
Moraga's
words,
"a
Chicano
homeland
that
could
embrace
all
its
people,
including
its
joteria."23
Rodriguez
explains
that
Proyecto's
mission
and
art
projects
portray
queer
Latinos/as
as
mestizo/a
and
encourage
embracing
indigeneity
as
part
of
an
antiracist
and
anticolonial
queer
diasporic
consciousness
that
rejects
U.S.
whiteness
as
colonial.
Yet
the
words
and
images

248
Rodriguez
examines
do
not
name
the
relationship
of
queer
Latino/a
indigeneity
to
the
colonial
situations
of
Native
nations
in
the
United
States
or
Latin
America
today.
She
thus
suggests
potential
ties
and
sustained
differences
among
anticolonial
theories
of
queer
Latino/a
indigeneity
and
the
relationship
among
indigeneity,
settler
colonization,
and
queerness
for
Native
nations.

Chicana
feminist
and
queer
theorists
have
plied
the
tensions
in
such
ties,
notably
when
examining
the
work
of
Gloria
Anzaldua
as
well
as
Moraga
and
Bracho
as
performing
what
Emma
Perez
calls
a
"decolonial
imaginary."24
This
work
defies
the
violences
of
conquest
that
forcibly
amalgamated
Indigenous
peoples
with
Europeans,
subjugated
mestizos
as
a
racialized
caste,
a n d
established
Western
civilizationalism
and
its
colonial,
racialist,
and
heteropatriarchal
logics
of
domination.
Reaffirming
ancestral
indigeneity
allows
not
only
renewed
Indigenous
Chicano/a
identification
but
also
potential
alliances
with
Native
peoples
who
survived
conquest
by
maintaining
national
differences.
In
particular,
many
ties
exist
between
a
Chicano/a
queer
decolonial
imaginary
and
Native
American
Two-Spirit
identity,
as
attested
by
Two-Spirit
people
who
take
inspiration
in
their
decolonial
work
from
that
of
Anzaldua.
Mindful
of
these
interconnections,
I
deepen
their
discussion
by
considering
how
Anzaldua's
Chicana
queer
claims
on
indigeneity
historically
engaged
white
settler
queer
primitivism.
By
reflecting
on
these
engagements
in
her
later
work,
Anzaldua
opens
to
question
the
degree
to
which
doing
so
extended
or
troubled
the
globalist
and
white
settler
logics
of
queer
primitivism.
I
have
argued
that
globalism
in
white
settler
queer
primitivism
obscures
its
subjects'
locations
in
settler
colonialism,
and
that
these
must
be
marked
in
relation
to
Two-Spirit
people
to
accountably
form
transnational
alliance.
My
reading
of
Anzaldua
in
relation
to
this
is
shaped
by
two
concerns:
m y
demonstration
that
Two-Spirit
people
intimately
engaged
white
queer
colonial
desires
to
produce
discrepant,
decolonial
ends;
and
the
fact
that

249
whitesupremacist
settler
colonialism
genocidally
locates
Chicanos/as
and
other
mixed-blood
Native
peoples
outside
authentic
indigeneity
precisely
to
block
their
claims
on
Indigenous
heritage-perhaps
because
such
claims
trouble
the
primacy
of
state-authenticated
indigeneity
when
determining
who
can
claim
to
be
Native.
With
this
in
mind,
I
navigate
between
the
possibility
of
reading
Anzaldua
as
recapitulating
or
disturbing
white
settler
queer
primitivism
to
end
on
the
crucial
question:
how
Chicano/a
queers
and
Native
American
Two-Spirit
people
are
now,
or
can
become,
aligned
in
the
space
of
transnational
solidarity
committed
to
mutual
decolonizations.

Anzaldua's
work
has
been
subject
to
many
critiques
of
its
adaptations
of
colonial
discourse
on
indigeneity.
The
observation
that
she
adapts
colonial
discourse
is
less
interesting
to
me
than
an
explication
of
the
ends
to
which
this
adaptation
leads.
I
push
other
scholars'
critiques
to
ask:
along
what
national
horizons
in
a
settler
colonial
society
do
Anzaldua's
engagements
with
colonial
discourse
travel,
and
how
does
this
block
or
engender
alliances
with
contemporary
Native
peoples,
including
Two-Spirit
people
as
members
of
their
nations?
Sheila
Marie
Contreras
reads
Anzaldua's
adaptations
of
race
essentialism
and
primitivism
in
niestizaje
by
noting
that
"certain
features
of
the
primitive
have
changed
surprisingly
little
in
the
migration
from
Anglo
and
European
textual
projects
to
a
Chicana
indigenist
manifesto,"
as
when
Anzaldua
cites
"a
colonial
and
anthropological
archive"
that
"reproduce(s)
the
convention
of
anthropology
and
modern
primitivism.""s
The
important
point
is
not
that
Anzaldua
cites
narratives
of
primitivity
legible
in
colonial
texts,
but
whether
or
not
her
use
also
tracks
the
globalist
epistemology
of
anthropology
that
amalgamates
Indigenous
differences
as
the
"primitivity"
needed
for
"modern"
subjects
to
consume
to
know
their
own
roots.
Contreras
further
notes
that
"whether
primitivist
borrowings
are
viewed
in
terms
of
artistic
invention,
spiritual
reconstitution,
or
social
transformation,
they
always

250
promote
quite
consciously
a
critique
of
Western
norms,
as
does
Anzaldua.zh
She
here
affirms
Philip
Deloria's
observation
that
in
the
United
States,
settler
formulations
of
primitivism
as
opposition
define
the
normative
formation
of
white
settler
subjects
of
the
civilizational
West,
and
that
this
route
to
subjectivity
must
be
displaced
if
invoking
primitivism
will
act
to
destabilize,
rather
than
restabilize,
settler
colonialism.
Maria
Saldana-Portillo
argues
that
Anzaldua's
play
on
mestizaje
recapitulates
revolutionary
nationalism
and
its
racialization
in
Mexico:

What
Anzaldua
does
not
recognize
...
is
that
her
very
focus
on
the
Aztec
female
deities
is
an
effect
of
the
PRI's
[Partido
Revolucionario
Institutional]
statist
policies
to
resuscitate,
through
state-funded
documentation,
this
particular,
defunct
Mexican
Indian
culture
and
history
to
the
exclusion
of
dozens
of
living
indigenous

Linking
Saldana-Portillo
and
Deloria
(through
Contreras),
we
might
ask
to
what
degree
Anzaldua's
vision
of
Chicano/a
queer
indigeneity
or,
in
Moraga
and
Bracho's
terms,
a
"queer
Aztlan"
defines
this
decolonial
nationality
in
a
manner
that
disrupts
or
repeats
the
national
horizons
of
U.S.
American
or
Mexican
settler
colonialism.

These
critiques
can
be
complicated
by
articulating
them
with
the
theoretical
insights
of
women
of
color
feminism
that
Anzaldua
also
inspired.
Anzaldua
offered
"la
conciencia
de
la
mestiza"
as
a
de-essentializing
theory
of
Chicana
subjectivity,
echoing
what
Alarcon
described
for
the
theoretical
subjects
of
This
Bridge
Called
My
Back"
as
"consciousness
as
a
site
of
multiple
voicings."2s
Sandoval,
in
Methodology
of
the
Oppressed,
cites
mestiza
consciousness
and
interlinked
theories
in
her
claim
that
U.S./Third
World
feminists
"differentially"
traversed
modernist
oppositional
movements
to
create
decolonial
feminist
and
queer
projects.
Yet,
if
Anzaldua
inspired

251
women
of
color
feminism
to
critically
inhabit
and
cross
colonial
borders
and
open
their
contingency
to
change,
her
work
may
be
pressed
by
certain
other
implications.
Sandoval's
account
of
a
postmodern
economy
of
cultural
difference
invites
asking
whether
Anzaldua
has
portrayed
Chicano/a
queer
indigeneity
by
facilitating
or
troubling
globalist
logics
of
indigeneity
and
methods
for
their
circulation.
In
turn,
the
alliance
politics
of
U.S./
Third
World
feminism-in
Chandra
Mohanty's
words,
to
create
"a
political
constituency,
not
a
biological
or
even
a
sociological
one,"
from
"a
common
context
of
struggle"-troubles
any
feminist
claims
on
a
universality
not
situated
by
historically
contingent
struggle.29
Read
together,
Mohanty
and
Sandoval
place
in
question
whether
globalist
imaginaries
of
indigeneity-if
or
when
they
appear
in
Anzaldua's
work-interrupt,
or
may
be
altered
to
enable,
alliance
among
Chicano/a
queers
and
Native
American
Two-Spirit
people,
whose
activism
defies
globalism
by
situating
national
differences
in
transnational
alliances.

These
considerations
inform
my
reading
of
Anzaldua's
traversal
of
white
settler
queer
primitivisms
in
the
San
Francisco
contexts
of
my
stories,
as
explained
in
her
foreword
for
Conner,
Sparks,
and
Sparks's
Cassel's
Encyclopedia
of
Queer
Myth,
Symbol,
and
Ritual.
Here
Anzaldua
cites
a
quotidian
history
that
she
shared
with
Conner
and
David
Sparks
in
the
early
1980s
"when
we
were
all
living
on
Noe
Street
in
San
Francisco":

I
remember
a
night
in
the
winter
of
1980...
shoving
a
note
under
Randy
and
David's
door,
asking
"Is
there
a
Queer
spirituality%"
My
question
led
us
to
many
discussions
over
lattes
at
Cafe
Flore.
As
I
read
The
Encyclopedia
of
Queer
Myth,
Symbol,
and
Ritual,
I
feel
a
sense
of
belonging
to
a
vast
community
of
jotos,
"queers,"
who
participate
in
the
sacred
and
mythic
dimensions
of
life.
Again
and
again,
I
see
parts
of
myself
reflected
in
many
of
its
narratives
and
symbols.30

252
She
reflects
on
her
personal
reading
of
the
array
of
accounts
the
authors
present:

Like
one
who
is
starving,
once
I
tasted
such
articles
as
"Shamanism,"
"Tlazeolteotl,"
and
"Xochiquetzal,"
and
other
kernels
of
Aztlan
(the
mythical
homeland
of
the
ancient
peoples
of
Mexico),
I
quickly
lapped
up
the
Queer
stories
of
cultures
beyond
my
own.
(vii)

Anzaldua
situates
her
relationship
to
the
text
and
her
claims
in
the
national
and
cultural
specificities
of
Chicana
indigeneity.
But
her
praise
shows
how
the
text
arouses
in
her
a
desire,
framed
here
by
hunger
and
consumption,
to
incorporate
into
herself
"cultures
beyond
my
own."
As
a
global
and
transhistorical
compendium
of
apparently
culturally
specific
and
authentic
queer
spiritualities,
the
Encyclopedia
adapts
the
colonial
epistemology
of
metropolitan
universalism,
even
as
that
form
appears
to
be
countered
by
promoting
indigeneity.
Objectivism
in
the
colonial
encyclopedia
can
be
reinforced
when
an
array
of
writers
transmit
their
narrow
expertise.
That
style
is
adapted
by
the
Encyclopedia
with
all
entries
being
written
by
the
three
coeditors,
who
then
weave
a
singular
story
through
a
form
that,
by
marking
differences,
invites
readers
to
discover
relationships
written
into
the
text.
Thus,
not
unlike
Arthur
Evans's
"discovery"
of
gay
shamanism
by
studying
sexological
and
emancipationist
texts
oriented
around
berdache,
Anzaldua
appears
to
read
the
Encyclopedia
not
as
a
story
of
queer
indigeneity
prepared
for
her
to
find,
but
as
a
signpost
to
a
prior,
interior
knowledge
whose
recollection
the
text
incites.

My
first
reading
of
these
passages
suggests
that
the
Encyclopedia
and
Anzaldua
traverse
normative
routes
for
late-modern
U.S.
queer
subjects
to
consume
queer
indigeneity,
in
which
citing
cultural
specificity
leads
to
globalist
amalgamations
of
indigeneity
that
free
newly
indigenized
queer

253
subjects
from
complicity
in
practicing
settler
colonialism.
Yet
I
immediately
question
this
reading
by
recalling
that
Anzaldua's
relationship
to
the
text
is
marked
by
the
hunger
of
a
queer
feminist
Chicana
critic
defying
white
supremacy
and
settler
colonialism
by
reaffirming
her
Indigenous
heritage
on
lands
her
peoples
traversed
prior
to
conquest.
White-supremacist
settler
colonialism
already
racializes
and
indigenizes
Anzaldua
across
a
normative
relationality
to
white
settler
subjects
who
consume
indigeneity
as
difference.
How,
exactly,
do
their
vastly
distinct
locations
then
similarly,
or
differently,
articulate
white
settler
queer
primitivism?
I
contend
that
Anzaldua's
pursuit
of
her
own
decolonization
as
a
queer
Chicana
retains
its
integrity,
even
though
her
contribution
to
this
book
also
makes
her
decolonial
work
compatible
with,
or
inspirational
of,
white
settler
consumption
of
indigeneity.

This
effect
becomes
apparent
in
the
globalist
implications
of
Anzaldua's
inviting
Encyclopedia
readers
to
link
her
claims
and
those
in
the
book
to
"spiritual

For
a
"postcolonial"
mestiza
like
myself,
any
single
way
is
not
"the"
way.
A
spiritual
mestizaje
weaves
together
beliefs
and
practices
from
many
c u lt u r e s,
perhaps
including
elements
of
Shamanism,
Buddhism,
Christianity,
Santeria,
and
other
traditions.
Spiritual
mestizaje
involves
the
crossing
of
borders,
incessant
metamorphosis.
It
is
a
spirituality
that
nurtures
the
ability
to
wear
someone
else's
skin,
its
central
myth
being
shapeshifting.
In
its
disturbance
of
traditional
boundaries
of
gender
and
desire
and
its
narratives
of
metamorphosis-as
amply
presented
here-as
well
as
in
its
traversing
of
cultural
and
historical
borders,
Queer
Spirit
qualifies
as
a
kind
of
spiritual
mestizaje.
(Ibid.)

In
a
Chicana
queer
decolonial
imaginary,
mestizaje's
"shapeshifting"
invokes
what
Anzaldua
elsewhere
calls
"nagualismo-a
type
of
Mexican
indigenous

254
shamanism
where
a
person
becomes
an
animal,
becomes
a
different
person.""
Her
account
of
"spiritual
niestizaje"
thus
resonates
with
her
other
work
to
locate
Chicana
heritage
in
Mexican
indigeneity.
Read
in
that
frame,
saying
that
"Queer
Spirit
qualifies
as
a
kind
of
spiritual
mestizaje"
might
perform
a
Chicana
queer
indigenist
appropriation
of
prior
white
queer
primitivist
appropriations
within
queer
spirituality
movements.
But
read
near
her
reminiscences
in
the
Encyclopedia,
this
passage
reminds
us
that
in
1980
Anzaldua,
like
Conner
and
Sparks,
already
envisioned
"a
Queer
spirituality"
broader
than
any
specific
Indigenous
heritage
and,
perhaps,
global
in
scope.
In
the
intervening
time,
the
Encyclopedia
arose
to
market
a
globalist
vision
of
queer
indigeneity
in
the
era
of
modern
primitives
and
growing
white
queer
primitivist
movements,
which
became
an
immediate
audience.
I
in
no
way
presume
that
such
a
book
cannot
be
rearticulated
by
Native
American,
Chicano/a,
and
other
queer
people
of
color
in
discrepant,
decolonial
ways,
as
I
suggested
by
questioning
any
sense
that
Anzaldua's
consumption
of
globalist
narratives
must
produce
identical
ends
as
white
queer
readings.
But
the
concurrent
popularization
of
U.S.
queer
primitivism
as
radicalism
and
diversity
requires
asking
what
it
means
for
Anzaldua
to
promote
"spiritual
purpose
being
"to
wear
someone
else's
skin"-as
a
resource
in
a
queer
spirituality
movement
still
defined
by
white
settler
colonial
desires.
I
will
say
more
on
this
later,
but
this
narrative
act
differs
from
Clyde
Hall
and
other
leaders
of
the
Naraya
inviting
Radical
Faeries
to
join
a
Shoshone
and
pantribal
religious
practice,
while
requiring
non-Natives
not
to
repeat
it
outside
interpersonal
and
landed
relationships
to
Shoshone
people.
As
I
argued,
such
ties
are
troubled
if
they
do
not
necessarily
alter
or
if
they
even
extend
the
colonial
desires
that
lead
Radical
Faeries
to
participate.
These
grounded
relationships
differ
from
Anzaldua's
broadcasting
of
"spiritual
mestizaje"
in
a
globalist
Encyclopedia
without
stating
how
this
does,
or
does
not,
provide
non-Chicano/a
or
non-Indigenous
people
a
new
resource
for

255
their
primitivism,
or
indeed
how
Chicano/a
or
other
Indigenous
queer
people
should
respond.
Absent
such
statements,
Anzaldua
appears
to
be
centering
the
critical
work
of
Chicano/a
queer
decolonial
imaginaries
within
a
globalist
queer
spirituality
movement,
which
could
be
interpreted
as
either
confirming
or
disrupting
its
logic.
I
raise
these
questions
because
I
hope
that
examining
them
will
inform
how
we
understand
Anzaldua's
work
not
only
to
be
engaging
colonial
discourses,
but
also
to
be
modeling
possibilities
for
alliance
within
the
national
and
global
horizons
of
settler
societies
or
the
national
and
transnational
spaces
of
Two-Spirit
organizing.

The
possibility
that
Anzaldua
imagines
Chicana
queer
indigeneity
outside
a
relationship
to
Native
peoples
structures
Saldana-Portillo's
critique.
Recognizing
that
Anzaldua
"undoes
the
artificial
duality
of
a
border"
and
its
"material
violence,"
she
argues
that
`Anzaldua
could
proceed
to
resituate
the
Chicana/o
as
mestizo,
the
Mexican
as
mestizo,
and
the
Indian
as
Mexican
within
a
transnational
frame
that
would
address
the
unequal
power
relations
among
such
positionalities."32
But
instead,

Anzaldfia
quickly
slips
back
in
to
the
conventional
usage
of
mestizaje,
constructing
Chicanas/os
in
the
borderlands
as
the
"us"
against
the
Anglo
"them"
[and]
rallies
mestizaje
to
access
an
indigenous
ancestry
that
legitimates
a
prior
claim
to
the
Southwest
...
ignoring
the
contemporary
Native
American
inhabitants
of
the
Southwest
and
their
very
different
mytho-genealogies.

She
continues:
"Mestizaje
is
once
again
deployed
to
produce
a
biological
tie
with
pre-Aztec
Indians
rather
than
a
political
tie
with
contemporary
U.S.
Native
Americans
or
Mexican
Indians"
(282).
Arguing
against
the
condition
of
possibility
for
Chicana/o
nostalgia
over
our
indigenous
subjectivity"
being
the
rarefication
of
indigenous
peoples
as
past,"
she
suggests
that

256
 mestizaje
is
incapable
of
suturing
together
the
heterogeneous
positionalities
of
"Mexican,"
"Indian,"
and
"Chicana/o"
that
coexist
in
the
United
Sates,
or,
more
importantly,
of
offering
effective
political
subjectivity
to
those
represented
by
these
positionalities.

Saldafia-Portillo
asks
here
if
the
political
locations
of
Anzaldua's
theory
in
the
United
States
incite
a
settler
colonial
relationship
to
Native
peoples,
if
Chicano/a
queer
indigeneity
is
envisioned
outside
accountable
relationship
to
Native
nations
on
the
lands
where
it
is
imagined.
Yet
she
further
suggests
that
the
political
danger
of
primitivism
lies
in
letting
Anzaldua
reclaim
an
indigeneity
always
in
the
past
of
the
Chicano/a
queer
modernity
she
asserts.
In
this
light,
Anzaldua's
queer
modernity
remains
Indigenous,
but
within
the
United
States
it
also
may
code
as
non-Native
if
it
is
deployed
across
a
difference
from
Native
Americans
or,
indeed,
the
distinctive
lives
and
politics
of
Native
American
Two-Spirit
people.

As
I
have
noted,
productive
engagements
with
Anzaldua's
work
by
Native
American
Two-Spirit
people
show
that
no
absolute
disjuncture
can
be
detected
between
them.
I
raise
the
possibility
of
a
difference
in
response
to
calls
by
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
that
queer
alliances
commit
to
Indigenous
decolonization,
and
that
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
queers
r e sp o n d .
One
model
appeared
in
activism
surrounding
the
1992
quincentennial
by
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
and
the
Cairos
Collective,
as
recalled
in
COLORLife!.
Mariana
Romo-Carmona
reflected
there
on
her
"responsibility
as
a
Latina
lesbian,
a
Chilean
immigrant,
a
Mestiza
living
in
the
U.S."
to
organize
for
social
change
relevant
"not
only
to
myself,
but
to
those
who
survived
and
resisted
...
Knowing
it
or
not,
they
gave
me
a
future."33
She
names
a
responsibility
to
resist
her
assimilation
into
a
colonial
culture,
given
that
the
mestizos,
the
product
of
the
mixing
of
African,
Native,
and
European,
are
in
a
constant
battle
of
allegiance
that
attempts
to
make
us
forget
two
parts

257
of
our
origins
and
make
us
remember
only
one."
She
then
positions
this
affirmation
of
mixed
heritage
as
nonidentical
to
her
commitment
to
ally
with
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
and
other
contemporary
Indigenous
movements:

We
Latinos
and
Latinas,
while
we
exoticize
our
roots,
the
basis
of
our
music,
medicine,
and
spirituality,
still
answer
to
the
names
given
by
the
conqueror.
This
is
the
time
to
step
back
and
examine
what
has
been
the
cost
of
our
survival.
We
are
a
new
people,
it's
true,
but
our
older
brothers
and
sisters
still
inhabit
these
continents.
The
Mapuche,
Aymara,
Quechua,
Araucano
of
the
Southern
cone
of
America
still
maintain
their
languages
and
their
sovereignty.
It
is
time
to
step
back
and
accept
leadership
from
all
our
people,
beginning
with
those
who
have
been
the
most
silenced
and
have
the
most
to
say.
(12)

Romo-Carmona's
position
honors
her
Indigenous
heritage
and
the
kinship
it
grants
her
to
contemporary
Indigenous
peoples,
although
in
doing
so
she
is
mindful
not
to,
in
her
own
word,
"exoticize"
it.
But
while
recognizing
mestizo
heritage
and
its
creation
of
Latinos/as
as
"a
new
people,"
she
locates
"the
cost
of
our
survival"
in
the
embattled
differences
that
sovereign
Indigenous
nations
today
struggle
to
sustain:
when
"in
the
Americas,
Native
people
are
still
marginalized
...
I
recognize
the
importance
of
my
solidarity
with
the
struggles
of
all
Native
peoples
and
all
People
of
Color"
(11).
In
principle,
Romo-
Carmona's
position
does
not
differ
from
Anzaldua's
or
from
Chicano/a
queer
theories
that
seek
decolonization
for
all
people
of
Indigenous
descent.
But
she
reads
indigeneity
not
as
distant
in
time
(primordial)
or
generic
in
scope
(globalist)
but
as
a
multiplicity
of
contemporary
national
locations
on
the
lands
where
she
was
raised
and
now
broadly
travels.
For
her,
these
locations
first
must
be
negotiated
across
their
contemporary
national
and
transnational
distinctions,
in
forms
of
alliance,
prior
to
and
as
a
context
for
her
consideration
of
the
personal
meaning
of
her
own
Indigenous
heritage.

258
Saldafia-Portillo
also
invokes
these
relationships
by
contrasting
the
"biological"
logic
of
mestizaje
to
the
invitation
to
relationship
offered
by
the
Indigenous
activism
of
the
Zapatistas,
which
she
says
is
defined
"not
simply
on
biology
but
on
the
rigorous
practice
of
thoroughly
modern
cultural,
linguistic,
social,
religious,
and
political
forms
that
constitute
one
as
indigenous."34
She
accepts
from
the
Zapatistas
an
"offer"
of
"nonbiological
forms
of
culture
that
are
not
only
shared
among
a
practicing
community
of
indigenous
people
but
hold
the
possibility
of
an
alternative
model
of
democratic
practices
of
revolutionary
subjection"
(287).

The
alliance
work
of
Native
American
Two-Spirit
people
has
invited
ties
with
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
queers
from
within
Indigenous
transnationalisms
that
cross
their
interlinked
yet
nonidentical
locations
in
white
settler
societies.
Yet
Two-Spirit
activism
suggests
that
the
decolonial
work
of
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
queers
reimagining
indigeneity,
while
necessarily
traversing
colonial
discourses,
also
may
articulate
a
colonial
relationship
to
Native
peoples
if
they
do
not
deliberate
their
landed
relationships
across
their
differences.
Queer
diasporic
critiques
more
broadly
can
learn
from
such
relationships
that
theorizing
queer
mobility
or
displacement
without
articulating
their
relationship
to
settler
colonialism
and
Native
peoples
will
extend
colonial
power.
In
their
stead,
Two-Spirit
movements
already
model
forms
of
transnational
alliance
politics
that
potentially
link
Chicano/a
and
Latino/a
queers,
diasporic
queers
of
color,
and
all
queer
people
in
a
settler
society
in
pursuing
the
decolonization
of
gender
and
sexuality.

Two-Spirit
Transnationalisms
and
Indigenous
decolonization

If
queer
globalism
in
the
United
States
projects
a
settler
politics
by
naturalizing
its
settler
colonial
conditions,
then
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activism
disrupts
queer
globalism-in
civilizational
or
primitivist
formby
locating

259
it
in
the
national
and
transnational
work
of
Native
peoples
denaturalizing
settlement
and
pursuing
decolonization.
In
those
instances
when
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
projects
engage
queer
primitivism,
their
adaptations
also
attempt
to
disrupt
its
globalism
by
positioning
it
within
settler
colonial
relationships
to
Native
nations
and
calling
this
to
account.
Two-Spirit
identity
arose
by
positioning
Native
queer
people
within
Native
nations
and
transnational
Native
alliances.
Their
disruptions
of
globalist
imaginaries
of
queer
indigeneity
also
called
all
non-Natives
to
ally
with
them
in
transnational
work
to
challenge
settler
colonialism.
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
movements
thus
incite
a
queer
politics
that
disrupts
colonial
and
global
power,
including
by
articulating
critiques
of
global
power
in
transnational
Indigenous
activism
more
broadly.

When
Native
queer
people
in
the
United
States
and
Canada
proposed
Two-Spirit
identity
in
1990,
their
histories
already
exemplified
Native
responses
to
the
transnational
conditions
of
settler
colonialism
and
decolonization.
Native
peoples
and,
specifically,
radical
Native
movements
for
decolonization
have
been
burdened
by
the
perception
of
being
problematically
tied
to
place.
In
an
early
moment
of
postcolonial
studies,
non-
Native
European
and
North
American
scholars
positioned
Native
peoples
as
being
in
conflict
with
postcoloniality,
which
represented
a
transnationalism
that
breaks
modernist
ties
to
nation
and
land.35
Yet,
against
equations
of
indigeneity
with
fixity,
Native
studies
scholars
show
that
Native
people
formed
multiple
transnationalisms:
in
relations
among
Native
societies,
and
in
mutual
or
divergent
engagements
with
settler
societies
and
colonial
modernity.36
Settler
colonialism
itself
functioned
as
a
transnational
power
relation,
as
its
impositions
on
Native
peoples
through
genocidal
displacements
engendered
diasporas
and
multiple
experiences
of
Native
history
and
identity.
But
relationship
to
land
and
peoplehood
also
fostered
old
and
new
transnationalisms
among
Native
people,
both
prior
to
and
subsequent
to

260
colonization.
Furthermore,
because
colonial
borders
were
modernist
in
logic
and
practice,
Native
anticolonialism
places
their
logic
in
question.
Amid
calls
to
embrace
nationality
on
settler
terms,
theorists
of
Indigenous
governance
challenge
the
colonial
modernism
of
the
nationstate
form
and
reassert
Indigenous
epistemologies
for
the
relatedness
of
peoples
andland.
37
Against
this
background,
scholars
in
Native
studies
call
for
the
study
of
globalization
as
articulating
settler
colonialism.
For
some,
contemporary
law,
politics,
economics,
and
culture
hinge
on
who
counts
as
Indigenous
and
what
role
they
will
play
in
a
globalizing
world.
Here
they
note
the
work
of
global
Indigenous
movements
to
challenge
international
law,
global
economics,
environmentalism,
and
global
health
with
assertions
of
Indigenous
sovereignty.38
In
light
of
all
such
work,
the
transnational
practices
of
Native
peoples
can
be
read
as
destabilizing
the
nation-state
prior
to
and
coincident
with
the
appearance
of
global
governance
and
economic
globalization,
even
as
they
continue
to
question
the
nation-state
form
as
a
method
for
decolonization.39

All
these
implications
are
present
in
the
historical
work
of
Native
queer
activism,
and
specifically
in
the
form
of
Two-Spirit
organizing.
Two-Spirit
organizers
join
other
Native
people
in
marking
the
inherent
transnationalism
of
Native
experiences
of
colonization
and
resistance
and
their
critical
impact
on
theories
of
globalization
and
transnationalism.
Native
queer
and
Two-
Spirit
people
confronted
these
histories
in
the
border-crossing
mobility
of
their
encounters
within
urban
centers
of
Native
migration,
even
while
retaining
links
to
their
counterparts
in
rural,
reservation,
and
reserve
communities.
The
formation
of
Gay
American
Indians
in
an
urban
space
defined
by
Native
diasporas
performed
the
work
of
Native
migrants
to
create
urban
communities
as
what
Renya
Ramirez
theorized
as
"hubs"
that
help
sustain
ties
to
their
nations
and
lands.
While
Randy
Burns
maintained
ties
with
his
Paiute
family
and
community
on
their
Nevada
reservation
lands,
as
did

261
Barbara
Cameron
with
Lakota
people
in
the
upper
Midwest
and
across
the
continent,
as
leaders
of
Gay
American
Indians
their
identities
also
became
linked
beyond
Lakota
or
Paiute
nationality
to
the
transnational
activism
their
work
inspired.
The
crucial
role
of
pantribal
work
in
Native
queer
and
Two-
Spirit
activism
must
not
discount
or
appear
to
erase
its
sustained
relationships
to
multiple
Native
nations
and
lands.
Nevertheless,
non-Native
queers
consistently
projected
a
global
and
transhistorical
indigeneity
of
their
imagining
onto
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
that
they
did
not
request.
Even
repeated
criticism
in
Native
community
circles
of
Two-Spirit
activism
as
an
indelibly
"urban"
phenomenon
distant
from
rural,
reservation,
or
reserve
realities
fails
to
ascertain
that
"urban"
people
created
it
precisely
as
expressions
of
their
sustained
ties
to
communities
and
lands
that
first
and
perpetually
distanced
them
from
belonging.40
Blithe
characterizations
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activism
as
"urban"
should
be
questioned
until
the
participants'
relationships
between
diaspora
and
landedness
are
explained.
Thus,
despite
the
perceptions
of
academics
or
activists,
non-Natives
or
Natives
that
Two-Spirit
identity
invites
a
pan-Indigenous
blurring
of
Native
nationality,
in
fact
Native
queer
activism,
including
Two-Spirit
organizing,
arose
as
pantribal
and
transnational
alliances
among
Native
peoples
sustaining
relationships
to
many
nations.
Indeed,
as
is
evident
in
assertions
by
Burns
and
Hall
and
their
adaptations
of
research
on
Native
history
cited
in
Living
the
Spirit,
Gay
American
Indians
linked
Native
national
histories
in
a
new
language
that
did
not
erase
their
differences
but
invited
their
alliance.
Hall's
contribution
is
particularly
indicative
of
comparisons
of
national
traditions
enabling
new
ties.
He
foregrounded
the
Shoshone
traditions
that
defined
his
personal
and
familial
understanding
of
self
and
social
role.
But
he
also
invited
Native
queer
people
in
diaspora
to
think
across
national
histories,
so
those
whose
communities
had
lost
knowledge
of
social
roles
could
learn
from
others,
or-along
the
model
of
the
powwow-use
tradition
to
invent
new
forms

262
precisely
for
pantribal
work.
In
Hall's
formulation,
gestures
to
nationality
enable
thinking
transnationally,
just
as
the
national
is
reimaginable
by
thinking
transnationally.
Hall
thus
joined
Midnight
Sun,
Maurice
Kenney,
and
other
contributors
to
Living
the
Spirit
in
arguing
that
Native
queer
activism
will
be
guided
not
by
universal
claims
but
by
proposing
situated
ties
among
Native
nations,
taking
note
of
their
distinct
methods
of
kinship,
economics,
politics,
and
religion
and
their
historical
and
contemporary
national
relationships.

The
compatibility
of
national
specificity
with
ties
across
differences
also
was
modeled
at
the
1988
formation
of
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe.
The
flyer
announcing
the
group's
formation
narrated
it
not
as
a
uniform
project,
but
as
a
relationship
among
situated
lives,
in
its
long
listing
of
names
in
Indigenous
languages
of
historical
roles
indicating
gender
and
sexual
diversity.
Accompanying
this
list,
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
made
no
statement
that
all
the
names
should
mean
one
thing:
the
list's
existence
simply
proposes
a
relationship.
Determining
that
relationship
became
the
work
of
the
Native
people
who
joined,
as
their
specific
differences
entered
relationship.
The
group's
name
also
was
a
constant
reminder
of
these
stakes.
Rather
than
collapsing
the
lives
of
We'wha
and
Bar
Chee
Ampe
into
a
singular
or
distinctly
contemporary
term,
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
pronounced
their
names
in
Indigenous
languages
so
that
witnesses
must
inquire
about
them
and
their
national
contexts
to
even
understand
what
the
group
represented.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
was
one
of
the
first
Native
gay
and
lesbian
organizations
after
1990
to
begin
using
the
term
"Two-Spirit."
Yet
the
group
maintained
its
commitments
to
the
landed
struggles
of
various
Native
nations
and
to
the
formation
of
alliances
among
them
and
with
nonNatives
to
challenge
settler
colonialism,
all
of
which
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
represented
as
Two-
Spirit
activism.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
thus
exemplifies
how
the
activism
that
led
to
proposing
Two-Spirit
identity,
and
the
organizing
that
was
revitalized
in
its
wake,
arose
precisely
from
alliances
across
the
differences
of

263
Native
people
representing
varied
national
heritages.
I
invoke
this
model
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activism
in
my
application
to
it
of
the
term
"transnational,"
which
crosses
but
does
not
erase
the
national
fields
it
arises
from,
moves
beyond,
and
returns
to
engage.
In
their
historical
formation,
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
defied
and
destabilized
a
globalist
power
to
collapse
Native
differences
into
primitivism
or
panindigeneity.

Gathering
across
differences
produced
Two-Spirit
as
a
transnational
category
defined
by
dialogue
across
differences.
In
the
United
States
during
the
1980s,
Native
queer
activists
communicated
across
distances
between
local
groups
in
urban
and
rural
regions.
Many
recall
the
efforts
to
gather
a
Native
contingent
at
the
1987
March
on
Washington
for
Lesbian
and
Gay
Rights.
At
this,
one
of
their
first
transcontinental
meetings,
participants
reflected
on
their
aspirations
to
meet
again
apart
from
the
space
of
non-
Native
gay
and
lesbian
activism,
and
affirm
how
their
work
originated
in
efforts
to
engage
Native
nations.
American
Indian
Gays
and
Lesbians
then
organized
in
1988
a
continental
gathering
of
Native
gays
and
lesbians
in
Minneapolis,
led
by
AIGL
founders
Anguksuar
Richard
LaFortune
(Yupik),
Lee
Staples
(Ojibwe),
and
Sharon
Day
(Ojibwe),
among
others.
Participants
examined
Native
histories
of
gender
and
sexual
diversity
and
their
own
lives,
in
conversations
later
excerpted
in
Mona
Smith's
film
Honored
by
the
Moon.
AIGL's
second
gathering
in
1989
drew
participants
from
Manitoba,
who
proposed
that
they
host
the
third,
Winnipeg
gathering
as
the
"International
Gathering
of
American
Indian
and
First
Nations
Gays
and
Lesbians."
This
gathering
formed
the
space
where
participants
sought
to
develop
new
language
that
could
bring
them
together
across
national,
geographic,
and
cultural
differences,
while
still
linking
them
to
historical
roles
within
their
nations.
This
border-crossing
space
produced
the
term
"Two-Spirit,"
which
reflected
its
transnational
production
within
and
for
dialogue
among
Native
peoples.
Rather
than
having
been
proposed
in
mailing
lists
or
published
texts,

264
it
arose
to
describe
people
who
met
to
talk
and
develop
a
relationship
after
traveling
great
distances
and
despite
differences
of
nationality,
geography,
and
identity.
Two-Spirit
then
contextualized
and
sustained
this
conversational
relationship.
The
term
inherited
the
logic
of
the
gathering-a
cohort
of
Native
people
in
transnational
movement-so
that
its
capacity
to
cross
borders
originated
from
work
to
link
and
sustain
differences
gathered
in
relationship.
Two-Spirit
affirmed
these
qualities
when
it
spread
from
among
its
originators
through
their
urban,
rural,
reservation
and
reserve
communities.
If
it
quickly
enlivened
the
pantribalism
of
urban
Native
activism,
its
slower
percolation
within
rural,
reservation,
and
reserve
spaces
marks
its
negotiation
of
historical
local
terms
and
their
physical
distance
from
the
Native
queer
communities
to
which
they
nevertheless
were
linked.
Despite
later
ties
of
the
term
to
its
urban
or
coastal
expression,
at
its
origin,
Two-Spirit
identity
spread
from
the
center
of
the
continent
through
constituencies
that
bridged
varied
locations
as
a
method
to
link
Native
peoples
in
transnational
alliance
across
sustained
differences.

In
light
of
this
reading,
the
national
and
transnational
commitments
of
Two-
Spirit
identity
methodologically
disrupted
the
globalism
within
the
colonial
discourses
that
formerly
defined
Native
gender
and
sexuality.
TwoSpirit
displaced
the
only
term
to
have
described
Native
queer
people
and
their
gendered
and
sexual
histories:
the
colonial
object
berdache.
The
object
had
consigned
them
to
a
culturally
authentic
past
aligned
with
colonial
heteropatriarchal
expectations
of
primitivity,
which
its
promoters
creatively
adapted
as
a
premise
or
tool
of
non-Native
queer
liberation.
Non-Natives
in
those
conversations
engaged
Two-Spirit
as
a
Native
term
into
which
they
could
transpose
their
investments
in
berdache,
or
that
they
would
critique
for
failing
to
meet
their
desire
to
do
so.
Yet,
even
misreading
Two-Spirit
as
a
continuation
of
berdache
is
a
sign
that
Native
queer
people
live
amid
colonial
discourses
and
necessarily
traverse
them
when
making
activist
critiques.
The

265
decolonial
logic
of
Two-Spirit
identity
meant
to
traverse
and
displace
the
primitivism
in
berdache,
by
countering
its
ubiquity
and
exceeding
its
logic
while
claiming
a
renewal
of
subjugated
Indigenous
knowledge.
When
non-
Natives
mistook
Two-Spirit
as
replacing
berdache,
they
failed
to
notice
that
Native
activists
had
replaced
the
globalism
and
primitivism
of
berdache
with
Two-Spirit's
situatedness
within
national
and
transnational
alliances.
If
the
new
term
ever
led
Native
queer
people
to
make
timeless
or
universal
claims,
this
followed
a
prior
effect
of
disrupting
colonial
discourse
and
emphasizing
Native
differences
so
that
they
may
be
crossed.
No
universalizing
claim
can
constrain
the
continued
capacity
of
Two-Spirit
identity
to
open
up
assertions
of
common
meaning
by
reminding
of
the
sustained
differences
that
it
attempts
to
place
in
relationship.

Two-Spirit
projects
that
engaged
white
settler
queer
primitivisms
proposed
relationships
with
them
that
directly
mediated
colonial
and
globalist
desires.
Two-Spirit
people
achieved
these
effects
by
positioning
non-Native
queers
within
the
transnational
power
relations
of
settler
colonialism
that
they
must
oppose,
while
supporting
Two-Spirit
efforts
to
revitalize
the
cultural
traditions
of
Native
peoples.
In
the
case
of
the
Naraya,
one
might
debate
the
effects
of
the
efforts
by
leaders
to
make
non-Native
queers
accountable,
but
any
such
debate
should
note
that
those
efforts
arose
in
the
context
of
an
intertribal
renewal
of
Native
traditional
culture
and
national
alliances
that
proposed
to
alter
settler
society,
including
by
teaching
non-Natives
through
Native
culture
that
they
were
told
not
to
appropriate.
Such
ties
differ
from
those
that
Anzaldua
invited
among
the
non-Native
and
predominantly
white
queer
readers
of
the
Encyclopedia.
By
enunciating
Chicano/a
queer
indigeneity
within
a
conversation
defining
white
settler
queer
primitivism,
and
situating
spiritual
niestizaje
as
a
quality
non-Natives
might
adapt
to
satisfy
their
desires
for
a
relationship
to
indigeneity,
Anzaldua's
writing
in
the
Encyclopedia
extended
the
globalist
effects
of
queer
primitivism
and
its
settler
colonial

266
relationship
to
the
cultures
of
Native
peoples
in
the
United
States
and
worldwide.
Yet
her
Chicana
queer
decolonial
imaginary
could
engage
Two-
Spirit
claims
by
locating
them
within
an
alliance
as
people
of
Indigenous
heritage
across
nonidentical
locations
in
the
power
relations
of
settler
colonialism.
In
this
sense,
Anzaldua's
desires
resemble
those
of
Native
American
queer
people
for
whom
genocide
has
so
erased
cultural
traditions
that
only
the
border-crossing
scope
of
Two-Spirit
identity
provides
relief.
But
in
doing
so,
Two-Spirit
identity
differs
from
spiritual
mestizaje
by
referencing
sustained
national
spaces
that
are
linked
within
the
situated
transnationalisms
of
a
contemporary
politics
of
alliance.
Indeed,
national
locations-and,
within
them,
familial
ties-for
Hall
and
other
Two-Spirit
Shoshone
leaders
explain
why
they
teach
the
Naraya,
just
as
the
historical
purpose
of
the
dance
to
produce
pantribal
relationships
among
Native
nations
is
maintained
by
Hall,
even
as
he
extends
this
to
non-Natives.
If
this
positions
him
in
a
fraught
relationship
to
queer
primitivists,
that
effect
is
located
within
a
prior
alliance
politics
among
Native
peoples
wherein
the
Shoshone
histories
of
the
Naraya
invite
ties
among
distinct
Native
nations.
Non-Native
participants
then
examine
their
basis
for
relationship
to
Shoshone
religion,
which
they
do
not
adopt
as
their
own,
even
if
some
translate
their
experience
into
primitivist
or
globalist
terms.
The
question
remains
open
whether
the
practice
of
Native
religion
can
be
a
means
for
disrupting
the
colonial
desires
of
non-Natives.
But
the
question
also
remains
open
as
to
how
Chicano/a
queers
and
Native
Two
Spirit
people
will
reclaim
indigeneity
together
within
transnational
relationships,
and
whether,
had
this
structured
her
words
in
the
Encyclopedia,
Anzaldua
would
have
addressed
queer
primitivists
differently.

Two-Spirit
activists
enact
political
movement
that
disrupts
the
settler
colonial
effects
of
queer
globalism.
They
correctly
identify
that
non-Native
queer
people
seek
to
be
global
subjects
to
evade
confronting
their
inheritance
of
settler
colonialism,
just
as
their
use
of
colonial
discourses
dislocates
Native

267
cultures
to
become
analogues
in
a
global
array
of
queer
indigeneity
that
defies
situated
analysis.
Queer
non-Natives
then
may
perceive
themselves
as
citizens
of
the
world
to
the
extent
that
they
do
not
examine
the
settler
colonial
power
structuring
their
lives
and
granting
them
global
spaces
of
imagination
and
movement
to
satisfy
colonial
desires.
By
asserting
linked
national
and
transnational
activisms,
Two-Spirit
people
situated
non-Native
queer
cultures
and
politics
as,
already,
transnational
projects
on
Native
lands.
Holding
them
accountable
to
confronting
settler
colonialism
blocks
globalism's
capacity
to
evade
or
disguise
that
power.
Two-Spirit
activism
thus
models
a
decolonizing
and
transnational
queer
politics
that
can
disrupt
the
settler
colonial
conditions
of
queer
globalism,
including
by
calling
on
non-Natives
to
challenge
their
locations
within
these
power
relations
and
to
ally
with
Native
queer
and
Two-
Spirit
people's
work
for
decolonization.
Two-Spirit's
transnationalism
has
acted
as
a
method
to
challenge
settler
colonialism
that
leads
Native
activists
into
the
broadening
transnational
ties
of
global
Indigenous
alliances.
I
now
examine
these
effects
in
the
historical
and
ongoing
growth
of
Indigenous
AIDS
organizing.

268
THE
CONTRAST
OF
U.S.
QUEER
PROJECTS
that
invest
in
settler
institutions
and
discourses
and
the
work
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
is
made
stark
by
Native
activist
commitments
to
the
collective
sovereignty
and
decolonization
of
Native
peoples.
Whereas
homonationalism
produces
queer
integration
into
settler
citizenship
and
union
with
Native
lands
by
naturalizing
settlement,
Native
queer
activists
lead
Native
peoples
to
challenge
settler
colonialism,
the
very
formation
homonationalism
reinforces.
Native
activists
thus
resemble
queers
of
color
who
lead
communities
of
c olor
in
antiheteropatriarchal
struggles
against
racism
and
imperialism
that
challenge
the
power
of
the
state.
But
when
Native
queer
activists
defend
Native
nations,
they
uniquely
contest
the
naturalization
of
settler
colonial
rule
while
locating
all
non-Natives
in
accountable
relationship.
In
turn,
by
engaging
Native
peoples
in
diasporas
caused
by
colonization,
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
movements
model
transnational
modes
of
naming
and
defending
Native
sovereignty.
All
these
themes
imbue
the
participation
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
in
Native
American
and
global
Indigenous
AIDS
organizing.
Responding
to
HIV/AIDS
in
Native
communities
was
a
key
context
in
which
Two-Spirit
identity
first
circulated
in
North
America.
Addressing
Two-Spirit
people
in
Native
AIDS
organizing
t h e n
marked
Native
peoples'
experiences
of
colonial
governance
over
sexuality,
gender,
and
health,
and
framed
acceptance
of
Two-Spirit
people
as
a
decolonial
mode
of
traditional
healing
in
Native
communities.
Similar

269
arguments
shaped
Indigenous
AIDS
activisms
crossing
the
Americas
and
the
Pacific
and
inflected
global
alliance
in
which
Two-Spirit
people
play
a
leadership
role.
Identifying
colonial
heteropatriarchy
as
a
danger
to
Indigenous
health
led
Native
AIDS
organizers
to
target
and
critique
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
in
state
and
global
health
governance.

I
locate
the
promotion
of
Two-Spirit
identity
in
Native
AIDS
organizing
within
broader
Native
activist
promotions
of
indigenist
and
decolonial
approaches
to
health,
which
I
shorthand
as
the
pursuit
of
health
sovereignty.
Here
I
invoke
sovereignty
to
refer
to
establishing
Indigenous
epistemologies
and
methodologies
as
bases
of
Indigenous
governance
and
of
Indigenous
peoples'
relationship
to
colonial
power,
which
they
displace.
Native
health
activists
pursue
health
sovereignty
when
they
promote
the
decolonization
of
consciousness
and
social
life
among
Native
people
as
a
basis
for
asserting
cultural,
economic,
and
political
control
over
the
conditions
and
methods
of
health.'
Native
AIDS
organizers
pursued
this
work
by
challenging
colonial
power
over
Native
peoples
and
its
internalization
among
them.
While
the
biopolitics
of
settler
state
and
global
health
operate
by
requiring
the
participation
of
Native
people,
Native
health
activists
engage
that
power
more
complexly
than
simply
considering
their
participation
in
state
or
global
health
programs
to
be
a
form
of
co-optation.
Kevin
Bruyneel
argues
that
colonial
formations
of
sovereignty
are
shifted
by
Indigenous
peoples'
self-determining
demands
for
relationship
with
state
or
global
power,
which
create
a
"third
space"
for
Native
sovereignty
that
is
neither
total
removal
from
settler
states
nor
assimilation
by
their
power.
For
Bruyneel,
asserting
sovereignty
is,
to
use
Chadwick
Allen's
term,
a
critically
(post)
colonial
act
in
that
it
creatively
navigates
the
ongoing
activity
of
settler
colonialism
with
disruptive
effects.'
Taiaiake
Alfred
counters
the
power
of
settler
sovereignty
by
asserting
Indigenous
governance,
while
warning
that
"sovereignty"
as
a
Western
and
colonial
category
marks
a
position
inside
rather
than
beyond
the
logic
of

270
settler
rule.'
Yet
Andrea
Smith
locates
settler
sovereignty's
disruption
in
efforts
by
Indigenous
feminists
to
reject
the
heteropatriarchal
nation-state
form
and
to
invite
all
Indigenous
peoples
into
alliance-based
identifications
and
movements,
within
Native
nations
and
transnational
movements.'
Indeed,
the
colonization
Native
AIDS
activists
challenge
includes
the
internalization
of
heteropatriarchy,
and
the
naturalization
of
sexism,
homophobia,
and
transphobia
as
traditional
to
Native
peoples.
Native
AIDS
activists
thereby
mark
the
destruction
of
colonial
heteropatriarchy-as
a
condition
of
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism,
and
of
the
complicity
of
Native
communities
in
its
reproduction-as
a
primary
condition
of
health
for
all
members
of
Native
nations.
Both
TwoSpirit
and
Native
AIDS
organizing
formed
to
defend
Native
nations
within
transnational
alliances
that
sought
to
change
the
border-
crossing
power
of
settler
colonization.
Whereas
"sovereignty"
tends
to
invoke
Native
peoples
as
distinct
from
one
another
or
from
settler
society,
transnational
Native
activists
reimagine
sovereignty
not
as
inherent
in
a
state-
as
in
the
Western
sovereignty
theorized
by
Giorgio
Agamben
and
critiqued
by
Alfredbut
as
a
capacity
of
Native
peoples
across
differences
and
interrelationships
to
assert
autonomy
from
colonial
rule.
Thus,
differently
from
Alfred's
questioning
of
the
term
but
with
similar
effect,
Indigenous
feminist,
queer,
and
AIDS
activists
displace
settler
theories
of
sovereignty
by
asserting
forms
of
decolonization.

In
this
light,
I
use
the
term
"health
sovereignty"
to
refer
to
a
broad
array
of
conditions
that
disrupt
settler
colonial
control
over
life,
notably
in
the
relation
of
living
beings
to
land,
the
water
and
food
it
provides,
and
all
its
economic
and
social
uses
and
political
management.
Asserting
Native
sovereignty
over
the
conditions
and
methods
of
health
potentially
disrupts
the
entire
institutional
apparatus
of
settler
colonization.
But
in
the
context
of
fighting
AIDS
and
the
genocidal
legacies
of
disease
for
Indigenous
people,
calls
for
health
sovereignty
specifically
challenge
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism

271
that
presumes
Indigenous
peoples
are
destined
to
die.
Thus,
when
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
argue
for
their
inclusion
in
Native
nations
while
fighting
AIDS
to
save
themselves
and
Native
peoples,
they
defy
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
both
as
a
colonial
heteropatriarchal
targeting
of
queerness
and
as
a
genocidal
logic
that
produces
death
for
Indigenous
peoples.
Both
a
specific
and
general
subjection
of
Native
people
to
genocide
is
challenged
when
Native
queer
and
TwoSpirit
people
in
AIDS
organizing
disrupt
Western
sovereignty
with
Indigenous
modes
of
governance
and
alliance
and
thereby
disrupt
the
power
to
adjudicate
the
boundaries
of
life
within
settler
colonialism.

Indigenous
Methodologies
in
HIV/AIDS
Organizing

From
the
early
years
of
the
epidemic's
effects
in
Native
communities,
Native
AIDS
activists
joined
with
Native
scholars
in
centering
theory
of
the
colonial
conditions
of
AIDS
in
Native
people's
lives.
Irene
Vernon
in
Killing
Us
Onietly:
Native
Americans
and
HIV/AIDS
introduces
the
crisis
in
the
context
of
histories
of
colonization:
the
devastating
impact
of
introduced
diseases
on
Native
Americans"
followed
by
occupation
made
diseases
"even
more
lethal
when
combined
with
grossly
inadequate
or
total
lack
of
health
care."S
In
the
United
States,
the
National
Alliance
of
State
and
Territorial
AIDS
Directors
(NASTAD)
framed
Native
people's
experiences
of
the
epidemic
by
the
historical
legacies
of
"Removal,
Reservations,
Allotment
and
Assimilation,
and
Elimination,"
which
contained
or
broke
apart
Native
communities,
and
forced
assimilation
into
settler
society
through
boarding
schools,
incarceration,
adoption,
and
relocation.
The
authority
retained
by
the
U.S.
federal
government
to
control
Native
identity
and
community-as
in
the
terms
of
tribal
recognition,
or
termination-also
controlled
access
to
services
set
by
treaty
or
trust
obligations.'
Federal
obligations
led
to
sporadic
health
services
before
the
establishment
of
the
Indian
Health
Service
(IHS),
which
health
activists
also

272
recognize
as
being
undermined
by
inadequate
funding
in
relation
to
need,
even
as
access
to
its
services
is
limited
by
its
primary
establishment
in
rural
or
reservation
locations
and
its
restricted
use
to
federally
recognized
tribal
members.'
Even
as
the
material
conditions
of
conquest
set
health-care
disparities,
they
conditioned
subjectivity.
Engaging
the
work
of
Bonnie
and
Eduardo
Duran,
Karina
Walters
asks
how
Native
people
encounter
the
epidemic
in
relation
to
the
personal
and
collective
effects
of
"historical
trauma,"
as
legacies
of
war,
displacement,
disease,
and
the
denigration
or
erasure
of
Indigenous
identity
have
created
forms
of
marginalization
that
produce
and
predict
poor
health.'
Shared
knowledge
and
experience
of
trauma
then
inform
how
Native
people
negotiate
health
services,
as
when
Bonnie
Duran
and
Walters
observe
that
the
use
of
disease
as
a
strategy
of
colonization,
a
history
of
unethical
research
practice,
and
ongoing
substandard
medical
treatment
has
left
many
[Native]
individuals
and
communities
distrustful."9
Native
AIDS
organizers
established
interventions
in
concert
with
such
analysis.
The
National
Native
American
AIDS
Prevention
Center
(NNAAPC)
in
the
United
States
cites
the
work
of
Walters
and
Simoni
to
conclude
that
"many
health
problems
among
Native
people
can
be
directly
attributed
to
`their
colonized
status
and
to
associated
forms
of
environmental,
institutional,
and
interpersonal
discrimination"':
not
only
because
"racism
makes
it
difficult
for
many
Native
people
to
access
assistance
from
legal
and
social
service
agencies,"
but
also
because
"oppression
in
conjunction
with
the
chronic
stresses
linked
with
discrimination
may
lead
to
more
physical
and
mental
health
problems
among
minority
groups."10

Native
people
in
the
United
States
and
Canada
responded
to
HIV/AIDS
by
creating
new
knowledge
and
services
in
urban
and
rural
contexts
and
on
reservations
and
reserves
that
answered
health
disparities
by
enhancing
Native
control
over
health.
Organizers
engaged
the
colonial
context
of
health
care
by
adapting
the
material
resources
of
treaty
and
trust
obligations
and
external

273
federal
funds
to
create
Native-centered
health
care.
While
Native
health
workers
on
or
near
reservations
and
reserves
and
in
rural
areas
worked
with
tribal/band
councils,
federal
agencies,
and
regional
Native
health
organizations,
urban
workers
addressed
limited
services
by
forming
Native
health
organizations,
at
times
linked
to
urban
Native
community
centers.
In
the
process,
some
urban
Native
organizations
sought
to
access
federal
funds
and
also
shape
countrywide
agendas
by
lobbying
federal
policies
and
distributing
resources
to
rural
areas."
But
across
their
varied
constituencies,
Native
AIDS
organizers
recognized
that
the
colonial
conditions
of
the
epidemic
presented
a
crisis
not
only
of
material
resources
but
of
knowledge.
Native
people's
experiences
of
HIV/AIDS
remained
nearly
invisible
in
medical
literature
until
Native
activists
and
allied
scholars
investigated
them.
Deeply
mindful
of
the
colonial
power
institutionalized
within
research,
Native
organizers
and
researchers
linked
HIV/AIDS
services
to
the
creation
of
new
knowledge
under
Native
control
that
could
address
Native
understandings
of
health,
health
care,
and
disease.
Recent
Native
research
on
Native
people's
experiences
of
HIV/AIDS
has
been
modeled
by
the
Honor
Project,
a
multiyear
NIH-funded
study
based
in
the
United
States
and
coordinated
by
Karina
Walters,
which
is
producing
an
extensive
and
varied
portrait
of
Native
people's
experiences
of
trauma
and
health.
Longstanding
efforts
to
assert
and
control
Native
knowledge
are
also
reflected
in
the
Canadian
Aboriginal
AIDS
Network's
Aboriginal
Strategy
on
HIVI
AIDS
in
Canada,
which
in
2003
proposed
a
Canada-wide
coordination
of
Native
AIDS
programs-sharing
models
and
resources,
developing
service
capacity,
and
lobbying
agencies
and
governments
for
resources-guided
by
the
philosophy
of
Ownership,
Control,
Access,
and
Possession,
or
OCAP,
when
pursuing
research
on
health.
Such
work
displaces
colonial
methods
of
research
to
enhance
control
by
the
Native
communities
under
study
of
knowledge
production.

Multiple
local
and
border-crossing
modes
of
Native
AIDS
organizing
arose

274
in
the
United
States
and
Canada.
At
times,
health
services
formed
to
support
longitudinal
studies.
After
its
1987
founding,
NNAAPC
became
the
first
recipient
of
U.S.
CARE
Act
funds
supporting
long-term
HIV/AIDS
research
and
service
provision
by
and
for
Native
Americans,
and
founded
the
Ahalaya
Project
in
Oklahoma.
By
"[consolidating]
access
to
medical,
mental
health,
spiritual,
social,
emergency,
and
educational
services,"
Ahalaya
presented
a
profile
"built
on
cultural,
spiritual,
and
traditional
healing
dimensions"
that
fostered
indigenist
identity
and
traditional
healing.12
The
data
NNAAPC
collected
was
revisited
at
the
2003
"Gathering
Our
Wisdom"
research
and
policy
summit
when
participants
argued
against
Native
HIV
education
based
on
"disease
prevention"
rather
than
"wellness"
and
argued
that
"culturally
appropriate
care
and
treatment"
for
Native
people
should
develop
tools
for
"maintaining
mental/emotional/physical/spiritual
balance."13
Regional
Native
AIDS
projects
also
promoted
culture-based
health
services
from
an
early
date.
The
Indigenous
People's
Task
Force
(former
Minnesota
American
Indian
AIDS
Task
Force)
formed
in
1987
to
coordinate
HIV/AIDS
education
and
health
care
for
Native
people
in
Minnesota.
Under
the
leadership
of
founding
director
Sharon
Day,
the
task
force
has
centered
access
for
clients
living
with
or
affected
by
HIV/AIDS
on
methods
of
traditional
healing,
and
has
fostered
creative
modes
of
HIV/AIDS
education.
For
instance,
the
task
force-based
peer
education
troupe
Ogitchidag
Gikinooamaagad
Players
produces
performances
based
in
storytelling
to
transmit
HIV/AIDS
information
to
Native
audiences.14In
all
such
work,
Native
AIDS
organizers
adapted
available
resources,
including
federal
funds,
to
create
health
education
and
health
care
that
offered
alternatives
to
the
institutional
and
cultural
form
of
non-Native
medical
management.
Their
focusing
on
Native
cultural
traditions
for
clients
to
adapt
fostered
indigenist
identifications
as
decolonial
contexts
for
working
with
illness
and
enhancing
health.

275
 Early
Native
AIDS
organizers
utilized
visual
and
other
creative
media
to
promote
decolonial
and
indigenist
identity
as
a
mode
of
wellness
and
healing
for
Native
people.
I
now
compare
a
small
set
of
high-profile
media
by
NNAAPC
and
the
Indigenous
People's
Task
Force
that
show
how
imaginative
representations
countered
AIDS
stigma-including
by
foregrounding
Native
women-while
inviting
Native
people
affected
by
HIV/AIDS
to
see
themselves
as
central
to
the
strength
and
survival
of
Native
communities.
In
1988,
NNAAPC
presented
one
of
its
first
major
prevention
education
projects,
We
Owe
It
to
Ourselves
and
to
Our
Children,
as
a
large-format
booklet
on
natural-fiber
paper
together
with
a
video
presentation
and
storytelling
packets.
Made
for
small-group
presentations,
these
texts
invited
audiences
to
connect
to
Native
cultural
traditions
in
a
form
the
writers
described
as
"subtle
and
beautiful
...
to
diffuse
the
embarrassment
associated
with
STD's,"
even
as
"images
and
legends"
invited
readers
to
"think
not
only
of
themselves"
but
also
of
generations
to
follow.""
The
text
opens
by
juxtaposing
photographs
of
natural
spaces
with
a
nineteenth-century
photograph
of
a
Pima
mother
holding
an
infant,
next
to
a
narrative
of
motherhood
as
a
theme
of
multigenerational
interconnection.
The
booklet's
midpoint
then
shifts
to
address
health,
with
two
large
pages
containing
scattered
text
set
against
a
thin
interleaf,
where
statements
about
STDs
and
phrases
such
as
"My
doctor
says
it
could
make
it
hard
for
me
to
get
pregnant"
and
"I
AM
AFRAID"
are
juxtaposed
against
resolutions
such
as
"I
just
said,
you
don't
mind
using
these,
do
you?
AND
HE
DIDN'T,"
and
"I
WAS
AFRAID."
By
then
closing
with
STD
and
testing
information
set
against
the
opening
images,
the
text
directs
readers
to
health
knowledge
by
shifting
fear
of
disease,
sexuality,
or
power
to
recall
historical
ties
while
centering
motherhood
as
a
metaphor
of
survival.
In
messages
also
reinforced
in
the
video
by
codesigners
Cathy
Kodama
and
Terry
Tafoya,
We
Owe
It
to
Ourselves
and
to
Our
Children
calls
on
Native
people
confronting
AIDS
to
adopt
indigenist
identity
and
a
sense
of
shared

276
responsibility
for
collective
survival
as
a
basis
for
making
healthy
decisions.

In
concert
and
contrast,
an
early
video
produced
by
the
Minnesota
American
Indian
AIDS
Task
Force,
Her
Giveaway
(1988),
directs
Native
audiences
confronting
the
epidemic
to
relate
to
a
specific
life
that
challenges
normalized
boundaries
of
tradition
and
community
belonging.11
The
video
primarily
presents
first-person
interviews
with
Carole
LeFavor,
who
speaks
frankly
about
her
identity
as
a
lesbian,
her
IV
drug
use,
and
her
survival
as
a
Native
person
living
with
HIV.
Her
story
challenges
the
invisibility
and
stigma
faced
by
Native
lesbians
and
IDUs
(intravenous
drug
users).
Her
narration
of
her
struggles
before
and
after
her
HIV
diagnosis
is
interspersed
with
images
and
music
evoking
her
spoken
ties
to
indigenist
identity
and
spirituality.
She
says,
"Living
the
life
of
a
spiritual
person
is
the
most
important
thing
any
of
us
can
do,
whether
were
experiencing
severe
illness
or
wonderful
health."
LeFavor's
narrative
challenges
stigmas
by
foregrounding
Native
lesbians
and
gay
men,
including
by
focusing
on
lesbian
experiences,
even
while
representing
IV
drug
use
by
Native
people
and
focusing
on
a
journey
to
drug
use
by
a
Native
woman
and
lesbian.
Task
force
director
Sharon
Day
(quoted
by
Andrea
Rush)
explains
that
Her
Giveaway
was
designed
to
break
through
forms
of
"denial,"
such
as
"`that
we
don't
practice
homosexuality,'
or
that
American
Indians
do
not
use
IV
drugs."'
Day
also
notes
the
need
to
challenge
even
more
denials
surrounding
AIDS,
by
observing
that
at
the
time
of
the
video's
production,
"many
of
the
materials
focusing
on
Native
Americans
do
not
discuss
the
groups
most
at
risk:
gay
and
bisexual
men,"
and
that
Not
being
able
to
say
those
words
or
put
them
into
print
does
a
disservice
to
the
community.""
Yet
Her
Giveaway,
framed
as
a
gift
freely
given
to
Native
audiences,
let
LeFavor
represent
Native
women's
relationships
to
HIV/AIDS,
and
to
Native
community
or
spirituality,
without
centering
either
heterosexuality
or
motherhood,
even
while
it
urged
strong
ties
for
lesbians
and
IV
drug
users
to
Native
familial,
spiritual,
and
political
solidarity.

277
 Across
their
distinctions,
Her
Giveaway
and
We
Owe
It
to
Ourselves
and
to
Our
Children
show
early
Native
AIDS
activist
media
using
storytelling
to
evoke
indigenist
identity
and
decolonial
renewal
of
traditional
spirituality
as
a
basis
for
health,
as
well
as
to
link
Native
people
across
differences
of
sexuality,
gender,
drug
use,
and
health
status
to
challenge
the
epidemic.
An
example
of
these
qualities
being
addressed
to
healing
for
persons
living
with
HIV/AIDS
appears
in
a
text
by
Tom
Lidot,
first
produced
in
1991
for
the
Indian
Health
Council,
and
reissued
by
NNAAPC
in
2003
as
Creating
a
Vision
for
Living
with
HIV
in
the
Circle
of
Life.
Lidot
described
the
revised
text
as
the
only
culture-based
curriculum
designed
for
Native
people
who
are
He
opens
it
by
saying
that
it

provides
a
framework
of
Native
teachings
that
encourage
the
reader
to
embrace
the
lessons
of
living
with
HIV/AIDS
and
to
create
a
vision
of
living
in
beauty,
health,
wellness
and
balance.
It
is
also
a
workbook
that
provides
an
interactive
structure,
allowing
the
individual
to
pause
and
reflect
on
the
material.
The
workbook
sections
prompt
the
reader
to
dig
deeply
into
their
personal
experiences
and
to
write
down
ideas
and
revelations
that
have
occurred
as
a
result
of
the
text
and
visualizations.
(i)

Through
the
central
image
of
the
circle
of
life,
the
booklet
graphically
narrates
a
pantribal
mode
of
Native
spirituality
linking
personal
health,
community,
and
the
surrounding
world,
in
prose
set
against
colorful
photographic
backgrounds
of
natural
spaces
and
icons.
In
sections
reminding
readers
to
accept
life
experiences,
release
fear,
reduce
stress,
and
foster
wellness,
the
text
directs
them
to
the
historical
and
collective
teachings
of
"elders
and
ancestors"
so
as
to
draw
upon
this
strength
as
we
face
the
challenges
of
living
with
HIV"
(24).
A
theme
of
connection
to
all
life,
and
especially
to
Native
communities,
invites
Native
readers
facing
marginalization
while
living
with
HIV/AIDS
to
form
bonds
with
other
Native
people
in
new

278
a n d
purposeful
relationship
("You
are
part
of
the
solution
that
helps
our
community
successfully
deal
with
the
challenges
HIV/AIDS
brings")
and
the
text
closes
with
the
reminder,
"Our
Ancestors
are
standing
beside
you"
(23,
47).
Against
fears
or
experiences
of
rejection
in
Native
communities
owing
to
HIV
status
or
other
stigma,
it
exhorts
readers
to
take
up
a
promised
and
needed
place
as
leaders
of
Native
communities'
struggles
with
AIDS-not
as
outsiders
intervening,
but
as
fulfillers
of
proper
roles
that
are
invited
and
affirmed
by
elders
and
ancestors.
This
text
locates
physical,
mental,
and
spiritual
self-care
for
Native
people
living
with
HIV/AIDS
in
collective
Native
identity
and
action
in
response
to
the
AIDS
crisis.

These
texts
indicate
how,
at
the
end
of
the
first
decade
of
the
AIDS
epidemic,
Native
AIDS
organizers
created
high-profile
media
that
theorized
the
colonial
conditions
of
Native
people's
experiences
of
HIV/AIDS
by
incit
ing
decolonial
and
indigenist
identities
and
solidarities.
They
reflected
the
view
that
the
marginality
of
Native
people
from
good
health
attended
on
material
and
cultural
legacies
of
colonization,
but
they
also
put
that
view
into
practice,
by
promoting
identities
for
overturning
stigma
and
inspiring
solidarity
across
the
differences
of
gender,
sexuality,
and
drug
use
that
AIDS
highlighted
among
Native
people.
Contributions
by
Native
people
living
with
HIV/AIDS
thus
became
crucial
not
just
to
their
personal
healing
but
to
the
survival
of
Native
communities.
Enacting
these
decolonial
and
indigenist
reflections
would
interrupt
the
colonial
conditions
of
health
and
bring
Native
people
together
across
differences
in
solidarity
to
fight
AIDS.

Decolonizing
Gender
and
Sexuality,
Redefining
Collectivity

Two-Spirit
identity
and
other
assertions
of
traditional
gender
and
sexual
diversity
presented
Native
AIDS
activism
with
theories
and
methods
for
the
collective
decolonization
of
Native
peoples.
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
often
were
key
to
creating
Native
AIDS
projects.
These
projects

279
differed
from
early
AIDS
groups
in
the
United
States
and
Canada
in
the
indigenist
and
decolonial
nature
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activist
efforts
to
reclaim
traditional
gender
and
sexuality
while
marking
settler
colonization
as
a
condition
of
their
own
and
their
communities'
vulnerability
to
AIDS.
Against
those
power
relations,
Native
AIDS
organizers
situated
respect
for
Two-Spirit
people
and
traditional
gender
and
sexual
diversity
as
methods
of
personal
and
collective
healing
in
Native
communities
and
conditions
for
asserting
health
sovereignty.

Native
AIDS
organizing
arose
historically
in
close
relation
to
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activism.
During
the
1980s,
Gay
American
Indians
in
San
Francisco,
the
Native
Cultural
Society
in
Vancouver,
and
American
Indian
Gays
and
Lesbians
in
Minneapolis
formed
cultural
spaces
that
respected
and
supported
Native
GLBTQ
people
even
as
they
educated
nonNative
and
Native
people
about
their
existence.
These
and
similar
groups
played
key
roles
in
forming
the
first
Native
AIDS
organizations
or
in
staffing
their
programs-so
much
so
that,
over
time,
many
local
AIDS
programs
became
key
spaces
for
linking
Native
queer
people
in
community.
Their
participation
also
infused
early
AIDS
organizing
with
a
forthright
addressing
of
sexuality
and
gender
diversity
in
Native
communities.
As
a
result,
Native
HIV/AIDS
education
increasingly
affirmed
a
traditional
basis
for
gender
and
sexual
diversity
and
traced
stigma
associated
with
sexuality,
gender,
and
AIDS
to

Many
examples
exist
of
Native
AIDS
organizing
being
grounded
in
renewing
tradition
and
fostering
solidarity
under
the
leadership
of
Native
GLBTQ
people.
In
1988,
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
was
co-organized
by
Curtis
Harris
and
Nic
Billey,
who
worked
in
the
HIV/AIDS
Project
at
the
American
Indian
Community
House.
The
group's
invocation
of
We'wha
and
Bar
Chee
Ampe
reflected
ties
to
tradition
already
promoted
at
the
Community
House
and
encouraged
by
its
HIV/AIDS
Project,
which

280
organizers
described
as
providing

peer
counseling,
support
groups,
skills
building
workshops,
and
sexually
transmitted
disease
education.
These
culturally
appropriate
services
are
also
based
in
the
traditions
and
spirituality
of
the
"urban"
American
Indian/Native
American/Alaska

In
Minneapolis,
the
Minnesota
American
Indian
AIDS
Task
Force
was
founded
nearly
simultaneously
with
American
Indian
Gays
and
Lesbians
(AIGL),
which
then
shared
staff
and
programs.
One
of
the
task
force's
first
HIV/AIDS
education
videos,
Mona
Smith's
Honored
by
the
Moon,
recorded
people
at
the
first
International
Native
GLBT
gathering
(1988)
discussing
their
ties
to
traditional
spirituality.
By
placing
AIDS
in
the
background,
this
video
testifies
to
a
recognition
that
challenging
sexual
stigma
and
honoring
traditional
belonging
would
promote
health
for
Native
people
in
the
AIDS
crisis.

Such
efforts
to
realize
acceptance
energized
Native
GLBTQ
people's
desires
for
new
language
to
communicate
and
directly
informed
the
first
international
gatherings
under
the
direction
of
AIGL
and
its
Winnipeg
allies,
and
the
adoption
in
1990
of
Two-Spirit
identity.
The
term's
adoption
initiated
its
circulation
in
rural
and
reservation
contexts
where
many
participants
lived,
although
it
did
not
translate
as
quickly
among
them,
whether
because
of
the
term's
local
silencing
of
gender
or
sexual
diversity
or
the
presence
of
local
categories
that
did
not
appear
to
require
translation.
Two-Spirit
more
quickly
informed
urban
Native
queer
activist
communities,
whose
prior
efforts
to
link
multiple
histories
in
border-crossing
narratives
found
in
it
a
pantribal
language
that
still
could
be
adapted
to
describe
particular
Native
traditions.
This
is
the
context
in
which
Two-Spirit's
rapid
inspiration
of
urban
Native
queer
activism
also
informed
their
AIDS
activism.
For
instance,
Darcy
Albert
recounts
how

281
the
Toronto
group
Gays
and
Lesbians
of
the
First
Nations
was
formed
in
1989
to
address
the
fact
that
"a
number
of
people
from
our
community
had
already
been
infected
or
affected
by
HIV/AIDS,
and
there
were
some
who
had
already
died
of
AIDS
related
ill
nesses."21
In
this
context,
members
changed
their
name
to
2-Spirit
People
of
the
1st
Nations-and,
later,
to
2-
Spirits-while
growing
into
Canada's
largest
urban
Native
AIDS
organization.22
Two-Spirit
identity
also
galvanized
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe's
efforts
in
one
of
its
first
major
events
to
host
the
first
North
American
conference
on
Native
GLBTQ
people
and
AIDS,
"Two-Spirits
and
HIV,"
in
1991.23
Hosted
by
the
Community
House,
the
event
drew
Native
AIDS
organizers
from
across
the
United
States
and
Canada
to
discuss
HIV/AIDS
and
Two-Spirit
identity,
only
one
year
after
the
term's
adoption.
Such
work
recognized
Two-Spirit
identity
as
an
effective
means
to
assert
the
community
belonging
of
Native
GLBTQ
people
that
Native
AIDS
organizers
had
long
promoted.

The
deepened
knowledge
of
tradition
that
Two-Spirit
identity
promised
did
not
end
homophobia
and
transphobia.
Native
GLBTQ
people
still
faced
rejection
by
Native
organizations
and
governments,
but
their
marginality
also
resulted
from
more
subtle
forms
of
silencing.24
Ron
Rowell,
cofounder
and
former
director
of
NNAAPC,
responded
in
1995
to
persistent
homophobia
in
Native
AIDS
programs
by
convening
a
National
Leadership
Development
Workgroup
of
Native
gay
and
bisexual
men.
He
was
prompted
to
do
so
by
a
recognition
that
"the
majority
of
the
Native
American
communitybased
HIV-
prevention
programs
have
focused
on
the
general
population"
despite
the
fact
that
gay,
bisexual,
and
Two-Spirit
men
continued
to
be
the
majority
of
HIV
and
AIDS
diagnoses.25
Rowell
noted
that

NNAAPC's
strategy
has
been
to
train
community
organizers
and
educators
through
a
series
of
week
long
workshops
...
Participants
would

282
 divide
into
small
groups
[and]
choose
a
target
population
...
Over
the
[past]
seven
years
no
more
than
three
small
groups
chose
to
target
gay
men.
When
questioned,
those
who
did
not
choose
to
target
gay/bisexual
men
would
commonly
say,
"We
don't
know
of
any
people
like
that
in
our
community,"
or
"I
would
not
be
comfortable
working
with
gay
men
because
of
my
religious
beliefs."26

Rowell
concluded
that
NNAAPC's
efforts
to
serve
Native
gay
and
bisexual
men
had
to
confront
two
"problems
in
our
own
strategy":
a
commitment
to
Native
community
self-determination
"had
not
applied
that
lesson
to
subpopulations"
and
had
let
Native
gay
and
bisexual
men
remain
marginal
"despite
traditional
teachings
in
many
tribes
that
do
not
condemn
homosexuality";
and
given
that
health
staff
"in
Native
America
...
only
seldom
include
gay
men,"
NNAAPC's
support
for
existing
programs
rather
than
advocacy
for
new
ones
"circumscribed
who
will
be
at
the
table"
(5).

After
convening
in
1995,
the
workgroup
concluded
that
"the
failure
of
Native
American
HIV-prevention
programs
in
most
of
the
country
to
address
the
needs
of
gay/bisexual/Two-Spirit
men
is
a
direct
result
of
the
absence
of
such
men,"
and
argued
for
an
AIDS
organizing
agenda
based
on
the
involvement
of
"Native
American
gay/bisexual/Two-Spirit
men
...
at
every
level
of
HIV
prevention
in
Native
American
communities,"
including
by
affirming
that
"recovering
the
traditional
respect
for
the
unique
contributions
these
members
of
our
tribal
families
will
play
a
critical
role
in
developing
healthy
Native
American
communities."27
The
workgroup
then
gave
rise
to
the
Pathmakers
Project,
which
to
the
end
of
the
decade
gathered
Native
activists
and
scholars
while
broadening
to
form
a
Two-Spirit
network
that
included
Native
women
and,
in
1998,
addressed
the
erasure
of
Native
lesbians
from
HIV/AIDS
education
for
Native
women
or
TwoSpirited
men.-8
NNAAPC
then
developed
a
new
curriculum
for
Native
AIDS
educators,

283
Addressing
Two-Spirits
in
the
American
Indian,
Alaska
Native,
and
Native
Hawaiian
Communities
(2002),
which
used
the
term
"Two-Spirit"
to
describe
Native
women
and
men
across
varied
identities
and
histories,
and
then
qualified
its
address
to
Two-Spirit
men
as
a
function
of
targeting
MSM
(men
who
have
sex
with
men)
HIV
prevention.29
This
reflects
a
problem
with
focusing
on
Two-Spirit
in
AIDS
organizing:
it
can
remove
the
very
visibility
it
grants
Native
women
after
years
in
which
they
were
erased
by
other
colonial
terms
for
Native
gender
and
sexuality,
like
berdache.
While
Native
lesbians
forthrightly
entered
AIDS
projects
that
focused
on
TwoSpirit
to
address
needs
among
Native
MSM
and
Native
women,
these
gendered
implications
remain
in
tension
and
invite
ongoing
reflection.

In
this
curriculum,
and
in
programs
promoted
in
its
wake,
NNAAPC
explicitly
recognized
gender
and
sexual
diversity
within
Native
communities,
although
here
as
an
indigenist
and
decolonial
effort
to
assert
collective
Native
health
sovereignty
that
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
would
not
just
join
or
benefit
from,
but
lead.
A
dynamic
example
of
this-and
of
certain
limits
to
it-appears
in
media
activism
by
Native
AIDS
organizations
directed
at
Native
health
workers
and
clients.
NNAAPC
responded
in
2006
by
producing
the
poster
and
video
campaign
"Together
We
Are
Stronger,"
a
set
of
four
posters
and
one
video
public-service
announcement
targeting
NNAAPCs
constituencies
of
Alaska
Natives,
American
Indians,
and
Native
Hawaiians.30
The
campaign
portrayed
Native
GLBTQ
people
within
Native
communities
by
arguing
that
their
participation
strengthens
collective
Native
responses
to
AIDS.
Each
poster
repeats
the
phrases
"We
are
brothers
&
sisters.
We
are
sons
&
daughters.
We
are
uncles
&
aunts.
We
are
friends.
We
are
co-workers,"
which
then
leads
to
subjects
identifying
as
Native
("We
are
Native").
The
statement
`And
we
are
in
the
Kanaka
Maoli/Native
Hawaiian
poster,
niahu-
then
concludes
the
"many
things"
that
"Native"
can
mean.
A
doubled
resonance
in
the
pronoun
"We"
might
refer
to
the
many
identities
of
the

284
subjects
of
the
poster
or,
more
broadly,
to
Native
communities
as
a
whole,
suggesting
their
interdependence
in
one
voice.

With
Native
health
workers
and
clients
as
their
primary
audience,
the
posters
do
not
use
the
term
"Two-Spirit,"
perhaps
reflecting
common
perceptions
of
it
in
2006
as
a
recent
or
urban
term.
The
Alaska
Native
and
American
Indian
posters
use
gay,
perhaps
similarly
to
its
use
by
Gay
American
Indians
to
invoke
lesbian,
bisexual,
and
trans
Native
people
as
well
as
Native
gay
men.
Nevertheless,
claims
that
echo
the
traditional
belonging
asserted
by
Two-Spirit
identity
structure
the
campaign.
This
appears
in
the
two
Hawaiian
posters,
which
address
mahu
with
the
respect
cultivated
by
Kanaka
Maoli
queer
and
AIDS
activists
who
reassert
this
traditional
gender
identity
in
Hawaiian
society.
The
message
is
reinforced
when
the
poster
in
English
is
printed
simultaneously
in
the
Hawaiian
language,
with
Hawaiian
words
overlapping
the
two
subjects
who
dress
in
a
gender
presentation
for
Kanaka
Maoli
space.

The
portrayal
of
nationally
specific
tradition
also
imbues
the
video
publicservice
announcement
profiling
Kurt
Begaye,
an
NNAAPC
staff
person
a n d
organizer
of
Navajo
AIDS
programs.
Begaye
relates
in
English
and
Navajo
his
unique
personal
qualities,
including
his
clan
affiliations
and
heritage.
His
narration
of
his
many
personal
relationships
in
English-following
the
English
script
of
the
poster
series-is
intercut
by
a
brief
fade
to
black,
after
which
he
is
portrayed
against
the
backdrop
of
the
landscape
of
Navajo
territory
while
narrating
in
the
Navajo
language
his
relationship
to
family
and
place.
The
video
thus
introduces
him
in
a
narrative
register
as
a
person
named
in
ways
that
still
could
be
imbued
by
exclusion,
while
ending
in
a
register
that
suggests
he
is
not
separable
from
a
grounding
in
traditional
belonging
and
that
such
belonging
cannot
be
questioned.
For
a
skeptical
viewer,
fearful
of
the
implications
of
accepting
GLBTQ
people
into
Native
community,
the
first

285
part
presents
a
challenge
to
join
in
work
for
social
change,
a
temporal
narrative
that
the
second
subverts
by
suggesting
that
no
"change"
need
take
place
for
the
life
of
this
Native
gay
man
to
be
affirmed
within
the
collective
inheritance
of
the
Navajo
people.
The
campaign
thus
makes
implicit
and
explicit
statements
that
rejecting
GLBTQ
people
from
Native
communities
is
a
nontraditional
act
that
must
be
placed
under
greater
scrutiny
in
response
to
the
crisis
of
AIDS.
It
portrays
Native
GLBTQ
people
in
AIDS
organizing
performing
leadership
while
grounded
in
tradition
and
thereby
calls
on
traditionalist
Native
viewers
to
respect
and
follow
them.

"Together
We
Are
Stronger."
Advertisement
for
National
Native
American
AIDS
Prevention
Center.

Crucially,
amid
all
such
exhortations
of
acceptance,
the
campaign
makes
its
titular
claim
by
linking
its
address
to
the
present
with
future
work,
concluding:
Our
community
is
stronger
together"
This
assertion,
implicit
in
earlier
Native
AIDS
organizing,
here
invokes
the
struggles
Native
peoples
must
fight
as

286
strengthened
by
the
participation
of
Native
queer
people.
Certainly,
in
responding
to
a
health
crisis,
the
struggle
requiring
strength
is
fighting
all
social
conditions
that
exacerbate
the
spread
of
HIV.
Yet,
in
light
of
long-standing
work
by
health
activists
to
build
decolonial
and
indigenist
approaches
to
prevention
of
and
living
with
HIV/AIDS,
the
strength
to
be
gained
may
be
an
enhanced
decolonization
of
Native
culture
and
politics,
by
a
rejection
of
homophobia
and
transphobia
and
a
renewal
of
the
traditional
knowledge
that
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
recall.
"Together
We
Are
Stronger"
thus
answers
past
struggles
in
Native
health
care
by
arguing
that
centering
gender
and
sexual
diversity
enhances
the
capacity
of
Native
communities
to
challenge
colonial
conditions
shaping
their
health.
Strengthening
those
communities
will
be
a
result
of
bridging
dif
ferences-of
nationality,
gender,
sexuality,
and
all
HIV-stigmatized
practices-to
foster
collective
work
for
health.

Without
needing
to
mention
the
category
Two-Spirit,
then,
"Together
We
Are
Stronger"
represented
a
response
by
a
major
Native
AIDS
organization
to
historical
implications
of
Two-Spirit
organizing-its
epistemology,
and
methodology,
of
identity
and
social
change
in
Native
communities.
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
benefited
from
Native
AIDS
activist
efforts
to
promote
their
lives
through
assertions
of
traditional
belonging.
This
transpired
not
merely
as
the
acceptance
of
marginalized
persons,
but
as
a
mode
of
healing
their
lives
and
those
of
all
Native
people
by
correctly
identifying
the
harm
caused
by
colonial
heteropatriarchy
to
kinship,
tradition,
and
solidarity.
When
grounded
in
a
broader
assertion
of
collective
control
over
the
conditions
of
health,
this
activism
challenged
the
rule
of
the
settler
state
by
mobilizing
Indigenous
knowledge
and
health
responses.
Such
organizing
bore
broader
implications
within
national
and
transnational
politics.
The
very
mobility
and
globalization
of
HIV/AIDS,
as
well
as
the
transnationalism
of
Native
activism,
led
Native
people
to
respond
to
AIDS
within
and
beyond
the
borders
of
settler
states.

287
Global
AIDS
and
Indigenous
Transnationalisms

Two-Spirit
and
Native
AIDS
movements
in
the
United
States
and
Canada
participated
in
and
helped
inspire
global
AIDS
movements
in
which
Indigenous
queer
people
lead
efforts
for
Indigenous
decolonization.
While
attending
to
matters
within
Native
nations
or
settler
states,
activists
theorized
how
AIDS
similarly
affected
Indigenous
peoples
worldwide
and
used
this
knowledge
to
critique
global
health
governance
by
articulating
Indigenous
sovereignty
on
a
global
scale.
Indigenous
AIDS
organizers
thus
model
a
decolonizing
politics
of
sexuality,
gender,
and
health
with
a
potential
to
challenge
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
globally.

North
American
histories
of
Native
AIDS
organizing
already
map
the
activist
routes
of
Indigenous
transnationalisms.
Norms
of
health
governance
in
the
settler
state
link
Native
nations
across
geographic
and
cultural
differences.
NNAAPC
formed
after
a
network
of
Native
queer
and
AIDS
activists
accessed
federal
funds
to
address
unmet
needs
among
Native
people
affected
by
AIDS.
The
organization
thereby
became
responsible
to
fund
Native
health
services
that
the
federal
government
did
not
need
to
run
but
could
influence.
Nevertheless,
it
also
enabled
Native
activists
to
undertake
local
organizing
that
otherwise
might
not
have
happened,
while
linking
Native
people
to
produce
new
methods
for
addressing
AIDS
and
negotiating
the
power
of
the
settler
state.
NNAAPC
shows
that
state
efforts
to
control
Native
peoples
also
created
opportunities
for
Native
people
to
collaborate
in
new
ways.

An
example
of
the
diversity
and
potential
alliances
among
Native
peoples
joined
by
AIDS
activism
became
clear
when
NNAAPC
followed
its
mandate
to
coordinate
Native
North
Americans
with
Kanaka
Maoli
in
Hawaii.
NNAAPCs
origination
on
the
continent
made
Two-Spirit
a
key
category
of
analysis
that
entered
broader
dialogue
when
engaging
Kanaka
Maoli
AIDS
activists.
Traditional
Hawaiian
gender
and
sexual
diversity
and
its
renewal
has

288
been
central
to
the
contributions
of
Kanaka
Maoli
GLBTQ
people
to
work
for
Hawaiian
sovereignty.31
Leaders
in
Kanaka
Maoli
AIDS
activism
include
self-identified
mnhu
activists
presenting
a
traditional
role
while
defending
communities.
Yet
distinctions
between
their
work
and
Two-Spirit
organizing
were
evidenced
by
the
NNAAPC
curriculum
Addressing
Two-Spirits,
which
only
discusses
Native
American
gender
and
sexual
diversity.
NNAAPC
workshops
taught
the
curriculum
to
organizers
from
tribal
or
nonprofit
agencies
from
across
the
United
States,
including
Alaska
and
Hawaii.
At
a
workshop
in
Minneapolis,
representatives
from
such
programs
included
many
who
identified
as
Two-Spirit,
in
addition
to
one
contingent
from
Hawaii
with
two
members
who
identified
as
mnhu.
Participants'
discussion
of
the
definition
of
Two-Spirit
evoked
points
of
commonality
and
distinction,
including
when
one
in
the
Hawaiian
delegation
said
how
she
understood
Two-Spirit
to
describe
her
life,
even
though
her
identity
remained
mnhu.
She
noted
that
life
as
mnhu
in
Hawaiian
contexts
aligned
more
with
transgender
identity
on
the
continent
than
with
the
lesbian
or
gay
identities
that
Native
American
Two
Spirit
people
commonly
claimed.
Here,
Two-Spirit's
North
American
pantribalism
met
its
geographic
specificity-and
potential
governmentality
as
part
of
the
mandate
of
a
state-funded
health
initiative-when
Kanaka
Maoli
partners
had
to
argue
the
distinctions
of
Hawaiian
culture.
Yet
their
engagement
also
demonstrated
an
intention
to
pursue
alliance
in
defining
traditions
of
gender
and
sexual
diversity
in
the
space
facilitated
by
NNAAPC,
albeit
not
necessarily
by
amalgamating
mnhu
within
Two-Spirit
identity.
Structures
facilitated
by
the
state
thus
simultaneously
facilitated
Indigenous
transnationalism
and
marked
certain
limits
within
it,
even
while
the
exchanges
engendered
there
affirmed
commitments
to
decolonization
that
went
beyond
this
space
and
continued
to
inspire
border-crossing
AIDS
activism.

Indigenous
AIDS
organizers
beyond
North
America
centrally
pursued
the

289
recollection
of
histories
of
gender
and
sexual
diversity.
Conversations
at
the
NNAAPC
workshop
noted
the
ties
that
mahn
activists
were
forming
with
Samoan
AIDS
activists
in
Samoa
and
Hawaii
who
identified
and
worked
in
fa'afafine
social
networks.
Samoan
activists
participated
in
forming
the
Pacific
Sexual
Diversity
Network
(PSDN)
with
Indigenous
AIDS
organizers
from
Fiji,
Tonga,
Vanuatu,
Cook
Islands,
and
Papua
New
Guinea,
many
of
whom
practiced
what
they
defended
as
traditional
nonheteronormative
social
roles.
Initially
funded
by
UNAIDS,
PSDN
aligned
with
the
Australian
Federation
of
AIDS
Organizations
as
a
regional
network
coordinating
AIDS
programs
organized
locally
by
Pacific
Islanders,
and
emphasizing
men
who
have
sex
with
men
and
transgender
women.
Concurrently,
as
examined
by
Maori
scholar
and
HIV/AIDS
researcher
Clive
Aspin,
AIDS
organizers
aligned
with
Maori
queer
politics
promoted
the
term
takatapni
in
Aotearoa
New
Zealand
to
name
traditional
recognition
of
same-sex
and
transgender
partnerships
in
Maori
societies.
Aspin
argues
that
this
work
models
to
Maori
people
and
Indigenous
peoples
worldwide
the
fact
that
promoting
"health
and
well-
being"
in
Indigenous
communities,
especially
in
the
era
of
AIDS,
rests
on
the
decolonization
of
gender
and
sexuality.32
Among
many
more
examples,
these
suggest
the
resonances
among
Indigenous
Pacific
and
Native
American
AIDS
activists,
as
well
as
the
continued
mediation
of
state
and
global
health
funding
as
forms
of
governance
amid
prior
and
ongoing
efforts
by
Indigenous
queer
people
and
allies
in
Indigenous
communities
to
fight
AIDS
and
the
social
conditions
that
facilitate
it.

A
global
shift
in
Indigenous
AIDS
organizing
followed
local
and
regional
efforts
to
send
representatives
to
pursue
Indigenous
agendas
at
international
health
conferences,
especially
the
biennial
International
AIDS
Conference
(IAC).
This
conference
of
the
International
AIDS
Society
has,
since
1985,
offered
a
venue
where
medical
researchers
join
AIDS
service
organizations,
governments,
and
pharmaceutical
corporations
to
define
knowledge
and

290
coordinate
responses
to
AIDS.
The
authority
of
this
conference
was
heightened
after
its
early
targeting
by
AIDS
activists,
as
traced
by
Cindy
Patto n,
when
ACT-UP's
"stings"
at
the
1993
Berlin
IAC
demanded
accountability,
and
received
increased
accessibility
for
local
and
international
activists
to
engage
the
conference.33
These
were
the
contexts
where
Indigenous
AIDS
activists
first
met
at
the
IAC.
Barbara
Cameron
attended
the
Berlin
meetings
as
NNAAPC's
official
representative.
She
reflected
afterwards
on
her
unplanned
encounters
during
this
trip
with
Indigenous
people,
including
Native
American
expatriates
living
in
Berlin
who
helped
delegates
form
a
sense
of
transnational
Indigenous
community
outside
the
conference,
even
as
Indigenous
delegates
from
around
the
world
held
daily
meetings
at
the
conference
to
support
their
Rodney
Junga-Williams,
a
NarungaKaurna
and
Adelaide
Plains
activist
in
Indigenous
Australian
AIDS
organizing,
wrote
of
his
travel
to
Berlin
as
"the
first
Aboriginal
gay
man
living
with
HIV
to
speak"
at
the
IAC:
"like
other
nungas
I
went
looking
and
found
other
Indigenous
people
from
the
U.S.A.,
Canada
and
New
Zealand
and
we
stuck
together
throughout
the
event.
As
a
group
of
people
we
weren't
that
many
but
we
were
very
vocal."35
He
is
referring
to
Indigenous
delegates'
efforts
to
write
a
statement
for
the
closing
session,
which
called
on
international
agencies
to
challenge
colonial
legacies
that
make
Indigenous
peoples
vulnerable
to
AIDS
and
to
recognize
the
autonomy
and
self-
determination
of
Indigenous
nations.
From
their
earliest
shared
engagements
with
global
health
institutions,
Indigenous
AIDS
activists
acted
to
hold
those
institutions
accountable
to
transnational
assertions
of
sovereignty
by
Indigenous
peoples
over
the
local,
global,
and
national
conditions
of
health.

Political
theorists
increasingly
bracket
a
distinctive
arena
of
recent
historical
politics
as
"transnational
activism,"
indexing
the
rise
of
nongovernmental
organizations
(NGOs)
as
players
in
the
power
relations
of
states
and
international
agencies.
Margaret
Keck
and
Kathryn
Sikkink
examine
a

291
distinctive
method
in
such
activism,
the
boomerang
effect,"
in
which
political
actors
who
cannot
achieve
change
in
states
call
on
NGOs
or
international
agencies
at
global
policy
arenas
to
place
pressure
on
their
issue
and
thereby
broker
decisions
with
states.36
Feminist
theorists
also
interpret
this
activist
method
as
a
mode
of
global
governmentality
when
it
integrates
nongovernmental
organizing
into
international
law
as
a
normative
site
for
managing
subjects
and
rights.
Inderpal
Grewal
explains
that
feminists
in
transnational
activism
challenge
formal
exclusion
from
national
or
international
law
only
to
find
that
women
privileged
by
nation,
class,
and
race
in
global
arenas
gain
authority
to
speak
on
behalf
of
others
while
being
recruited
to
manage
an
NGO-ization
of
social
movements.37
Transnational
activism
thus
produces
a
governmental
site
to
legitimate
the
international
laws
that
states
define
to
regulate
social
change,
even
as
citizens
in
dominant
states
are
mobilized
to
impose
hegemonic
power
relations
in
the
name
of
advocacy.
Yet
feminist
scholars
attentive
to
the
pervasion
of
these
power
relations
also
note
that
the
structures
they
produce
remain
adaptable
on
the
margins
by
the
very
targets
they
mean
to
control.
As
Anna
Tsing
explains
in
Friction
(2005),
when
local
actors
in
Indonesia
encounter
global
power
not
just
through
global
economies
or
governmental
agencies,
but
also
in
transnational
activism
such
as
environmentalism
or
feminism,
engaging
them
with
discrepant
local
stakes
exposes
global
power
to
critique
while
inciting
unpredictable
actions
that
may
trouble
its
effects.
One
effect
could
be
to
engage
the
circuits
of
global
power
by
asserting
sovereignty
from
their
global
and
borderless
authority
as
a
basis
for
relationship
with
their
power.
While
engagements
with
global
power
may
co-opt
radical
intentions,
zones
of
friction
merit
study
of
their
potential
to
produce
unexpected
relationships
and
effects.

I
am
interested
in
how
Indigenous
AIDS
activist
involvement
in
global
politics
disturbs
the
naturalization
of
settler
colonialism
within
global
governance,
while
facilitating
the
imagining
of
transnational
Indigenous

292
alliances
that
exceed
global
systems
and
model
the
alternatives
of
Indigenous
governance.
For
Indigenous
peoples
responding
to
the
AIDS
epidemic,
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
predicts
their
elimination
and
ensures
their
regulation.
Its
globalization
then
naturalizes
their
definition
and
management
by
"independent"
states
without
regard
for
their
inherent
sovereignty.
When
these
power
relations
coalesce
in
global
health
governance,
the
"participation"
of
Indigenous
people
is
not
in
question:
the
power
of
biopolitics
ensures
that
this
will
occur
regardless
of
whether
they
choose
to
engage
it.
In
this
context,
I
am
interested
in
how
Indigenous
AIDS
activists
rooted
in
the
defense
of
national
sovereignty
and
the
formation
of
transnational
Indigenous
alliances
addressed
global
health
arenas
with
discrepant
stakes.
As
activists
accountable
before
and
after
this
participation
to
projects
that
exceed
the
power
of
the
global
and
seek
to
destroy
its
settler
colonial
formation,
they
exhibit
a
critical
edge
that
bears
frictive
possibilities
for
decolonial
work
amid
the
pressures
of
the
AIDS
pandemic
and
its
settler
colonial
and
international
management
in
a
globalizing
world.

Global
actions
by
Indigenous
AIDS
activists
have
arisen
largely
as
interventions
into
the
IAC
by
holding
the
organization
and
its
stakeholders
accountable
to
Indigenous
demands
for
health
sovereignty.
In
response
to
alliances
formed
at
the
Berlin
IAC
and
after,
Indigenous
AIDS
activists
in
Canada
and
Mexico
mobilized
Indigenous
participants
at
the
IAC
within
existing
activist
ties
crossing
the
Americas
and
the
Pacific.
Their
first
event
was
held
prior
to
the
1996
IAC
in
Vancouver,
in
the
form
of
an
International
Indigenous
People's
Summit.
The
British
Columbia
Native
AIDS
organization
Healing
Our
Spirits
hosted
this
off-site
preconference
to
link
Indigenous
delegates
from
around
the
world
with
British
Columbia
Native
activists
and
others
traveling
from
across
Canada
and
the
United
States.
Because
the
summit
model
is
external
to
the
IAC,
it
readily
connected
local
and
regional
Indigenous
people
as
key
constituencies
of
the
work
it
coordinated
with

293
regional
Indigenous
AIDS
organizations
and
Indigenous
delegates
from
around
the
world.
Later
summits
repeated
this
model
of
linking
regional
activists
with
international
delegates
in
an
autonomous
space.
The
2008
Mexico
City
summit
was
led
by
Zapoteca
muxhe
organizer
Amaranta
Gomez
and
Indigenous
activists
from
across
Mexico
and
Latin
America,
while
the
2006
Toronto
summit
was
hosted
by
the
Toronto
Native
AIDS
organization
2-Spirits
and
by
the
Ontario
Aboriginal
HIV/AIDS
Strategy.
Summit
events
thus
arose
in
relation
to
the
IAC
and
the
global
circuits
of
people,
capital,
and
government
it
creates
by
forming
spaces
for
collaboration-not
at
the
conference,
but
nearby-where
hosts
and
visitors
linked
multiple
struggles
in
growing
networks.

Such
work
shaped
how
organizers
at
the
2006
Toronto
summit
drafted
this
network's
first
statement
of
shared
values
in
a
form
that
would
draw
the
attention
of
the
IAC,
states,
and
global
institutions.
Composed
as
an
international
policy
document,
The
Toronto
Charter:
Indigenous
People's
Action
Plan
on
HIVIAIDS
2006
asserted
sovereignty
over
health
for
all
Indigenous
peoples.
Activists
from
North
America
and
the
Pacific
spent
two
years
composing
the
charter,
which
demanded
that
states
and
global
institutions
answer
Indigenous
demands
to
control
the
conditions
and
methods
of
health.
I
interpret
the
charter
by
inspiration
of
Robert
Warrior's
analysis
of
the
1881
Osage
Constitution,
which
he
says
presents
a
creative
Indigenous
adaptation
of
U.S.
constitutional
law
that
responded
to
a
changing
colonial
situation
by
setting
indigenist
terms
for
negotiating
sovereign
relationships.',,
In
the
narrative
form
of
public
policy,
the
charter
demands
that
settler
states
and
international
agencies
become
accountable
to
the
authority
of
Indigenous
peoples
to
define
and
manage
health
from
within
modes
of
Indigenous
governance.
In
the
two
years
prior
to
the
2006
IAC,
summit
organizers
traveled
to
prepare
the
text
at
a
session
of
the
United
Nations
Permanent
Forum
on
Indigenous
Issues
and
in
numerous
cities
in

294
Australia,
Canada,
New
Zealand,
and
the
United
States,"
and
submitted
drafts
to
Indigenous
AIDS
organizations
worldwide
for
feedback.39
The
final
text
was
printed
as
a
poster
and
announced
at
the
Toronto
conference
as
a
form
of
media
activism
and
an
intervention
into
policies
governing
Indigenous
people
and
AIDS.

The
charter
opens
as
"a
call
to
action"
to
the
states,
international
bodies,
and
nongovernmental
agencies
that
control
"the
provision
of
HIV/
AIDS
services
for
Indigenous
Peoples
around
the
world"
to
recognize
the
"devastating
effect"
of
AIDS
on
Indigenous
peoples.
Marginalization
within
settler
states
produces
a
"range
of
socio-cultural
factors
that
place
Indigenous
Peoples
at
increased
risk
of
HIV/AIDS,"
such
that
"in
some
countries,
Indigenous
Peoples
have
disproportionately
higher
rates
of
HIV
infection
than
non-Indigenous
people."
The
charter
resituates
this
reality
by
asserting
Indigenous
peoples'
"inherent
rights
...
to
control
all
aspects
of
their
lives,
including
their
health"
and
"to
determine
their
own
health
priorities."
This
assertion
of
a
sovereign
relationship
to
settler
societies
also
centers
Indigenous
control
over
the
conditions
and
methods
of
health.
When
the
charter
calls
on
settler
states
to
fulfill
obligations
to
the
Indigenous
peoples
whose
lands
they
occupy,
it
marks
colonial
rule
as
a
force
that
Indigenous
demands
can
shift.
The
text
asserts
that
"governments
are
responsible
for
ensuring"
that
Indigenous
people
will
experience
"a
state
of
health
that
is
at
least
equal
to
that
of
other
people"
and
sets
the
terms
of
such
health
care
in
such
qualities
as
"access
to
their
own
languages"
and
addressing
the
"physical,
social,
mental,
emotional
and
spiritual
dimensions"
of
health,
while
"[communicating]
information
about
the
prevention
and
treatment
of
HIV/AIDS
that
is
relative
to
the
reality
in
which
Indigenous
Peoples
live."
These
statements
admit
that,
all
demands
for
autonomy
aside,
Indigenous
peoples
experience
settler
colonialism
as
the
source
of
the
conditions
of
poor
health
that
now
require

295
intervention.
Thus,
to
the
extent
that
Indigenous
communities
are
so
marginalized
from
good
health
and
Indigenous
governance
that
only
state
health
institutions
can
offer
care,
the
very
agencies
that
created
poor
health
within
a
colonial
biopolitics
to
produce
social
control
will
continue
to
manage
health
for
Indigenous
peoples.
Yet
the
charter
insists
that
such
changes
will
not
be
a
prerogative
of
settler
states,
but
will
respond
to
the
authority
asserted
by
Indigenous
people
to
define
the
conditions
and
methods
of
their
health
despite
ongoing
colonial
occupation,
including
Indigenous
control
over
the
production
of
knowledge.
The
charter
asserts
that
"governments
must
be
committed
to
consulting
with
Indigenous
Peoples
in
order
to
ensure
that
health
programmes
meet
the
needs
of
Indigenous
Peoples,"
and
that
"it
is
essential
that
HIV/AIDS
data
on
indigenous
peoples
be
collected
in
a
manner
that
is
[determined]
by
Indigenous
Peoples
themselves."
Governments
then
will
"ensure
the
central
participation
of
Indigenous
Peoples
in
all
programmes
related
to
the
prevention
of
HIV
and
programmes
for
the
care
and
support
of
Indigenous
Peoples
living
with
HIV/AIDS"
and
will
provide
"resources
to
Indigenous
Peoples
to
design,
develop
and
implement
HIV/AIDS
programmes
...
so
that
Indigenous
communities
can
respond."
This
last
statement
acknowledges
that
organizations
such
as
NNAAPC
or
the
Canadian
Aboriginal
AIDS
Network
(CAAN)
are
not
common,
and
that
their
ability
to
support
local
Native
projects
that
precede
and
exceed
their
state
funding
remains
one
model
within
state
health
governance
that
Indigenous
AIDS
activists
can
accept
for
its
track
record
of
being
open
to
critical
adaptation.
Finally,
all
these
calls
to
transform
the
practices
of
settler
states
are
framed
by
a
demand
that
international
agencies
"monitor
and
take
action
against
any
States
whose
persistent
policies
and
activities
fail
to
acknowledge
and
support
the
integration
of
this
Charter
into
State
policies
relating
to
HIV/AIDS,"
while
ensuring
that
the
"participation
of
Indigenous
Peoples
in
United
Nations
forums
is
strengthened
so
their
views
are
fairly
represented."
These
statements

296
put
settler
states
on
notice
in
international
arenas
that
they
are
sites
of
colonial
rule
of
Indigenous
peoples,
while
they
also
show
how
the
UN
Permanent
Forum
on
Indigenous
Issues
joins
other
sites
that
Indigenous
activists
already
engage
to
make
their
interventions
on
international
platforms
while
holding
national
and
international
law
accountable
to
addressing
settler
colonialism.

The
Toronto
Charter
is
a
critical
intervention
within
the
still-hegemonic
colonial
terms
organizing
state
and
global
governance
of
health
and,
as
a
result,
Indigenous
peoples.
The
charter's
language
does
not
model
Indigenous
governance,
but
it
does
tactically
open
possibilities
for
discourse
that
may
facilitate
the
more
radical
and
decolonial
ends
that
Indigenous
AIDS
activists
envision
and
seek.
It
never
directly
names
gender
or
sexuality,
but
an
implication
that
sovereignty
attends
on
the
assertion
of
Indigenous
knowledge
reflects
activist
efforts
to
ground
the
defense
of
gender
and
sexual
diversity
in
the
protection
of
Indigenous
communities
from
AIDS.

Although
the
charter
only
alludes
to
such
work,
its
announcement
at
the
2006
Toronto
IAC
performed
it.
During
the
conference,
Indigenous
delegates
invited
delegates
and
Toronto-area
residents
to
a
press
event
at
the
IAC-designated
Indigenous
people's
pavilion
where
Indigenous
delegates
joined
local
Native
AIDS
activists,
including
many
Native
queer
and
TwoSpirit
people,
to
hear
the
charter
read
before
global
and
Indigenous
me dia.
Organizers
announced
the
charter
as
a
first
statement
by
an
international
alliance
of
Indigenous
AIDS
activists;
they
read
key
portions,
and
called
for
a
response
from
the
society
and
governments,
before
distributing
the
poster
to
attendees.
The
framing
of
this
photograph
suggests
how
activists
adapted
the
visuality
of
international
conference
space
to
act
on
the
boundaries
of
global
power.
We
see
here
a
space
where
global
agencies
officially
recognize
Indigenous
peoples,
but,
at
the
same
time,
a
public
space
within
the
settler
state
that
Indigenous
peoples
contest
along
its
border
with

297
the
power
of
global
health.
On
the
left
side
of
the
frame
is
the
convention
center
passage
to
the
conference
where
registered
delegates
enter,
but
on
the
right
side
of
the
frame
are
open
public
gates
to
downtown
Toronto.
This
event
pursued
media
activism
by
calling
on
global
corporate
and
independent
media
at
the
conference
to
cover
the
novelty
of
an
Indigenous
AIDS
protest,
while
creating
a
historic
event
for
recording
by
Indigenous
media
representatives
and
activists'
own
organizations.
While
the
press
event
called
attention
to
Indigenous
AIDS
activist
interventions
at
the
conference,
the
event
was
not
in
fact
designed
as
a
presentation
to
the
IAC's
stakeholders,
none
of
whom
attended
it.
In
this
sense,
the
significance
of
this
event
is
less
that
it
should
have
received
a
formal
response
from
global
health
managers
than
that
it
succeeded
in
performatively
imagining
health
sovereignty
by
demonstrating
that
Indigenous
AIDS
activists
do
constitute
a
global
alliance
that
can
demand
control
over
the
conditions
of
health
by
Indigenous
peoples
worldwide.

298
 Launch
of
The
Toronto
Charter
(formally
known
as
The
Toronto
Charter:
The
Indigenous
Peoples'
Action
Plan
on
HIV/AIDS)
at
the
XVI
International
AIDS
Conference,
2006.
Photograph
by
Michael
Costello.
Courtesy
of
Australian
Federation
of
AIDS
Organizations.

One
other
image
in
this
photograph
stands
out
in
the
background:
it
is
a
flag
that
the
San
Francisco
Bay
Area
American
Indian
Two-Spirits,
which
more
than
a
decade
earlier
succeeded
Gay
American
Indians,
gave
to
the
Toronto
organization
2-Spirits
for
their
use
in
the
Toronto
pride
parade.
The
flag's
symbolism,
which
includes
a
medicine
wheel
and
other
images,
asserts
an
Indigenous
difference
overlaid
on,
yet
incompletely
absorbed
by,
the
queer
"diversity"
represented
by
the
rainbow
flag.
Indeed,
this
flag
announces
the
identity
Two-Spirit,
which
represents
a
unique
location
within
the
colonial
histories
of
sexuality
and
gender,
to
which
all
non-Native
queer
people
in
the

299
background
are
accountable.
But
the
flag's
appearance
at
this
event
is
also
a
reminder
that
The
Toronto
Charter
never
mentioned
Two-Spirit
or
any
other
indigenist
claim
on
gender
or
sexuality.
"Together
We
Are
Stronger"
intimated
those
claims
by
calling
Indigenous
people
to
challenge
heteronormativity's
colonial
roots
and
affirm
relationship
across
differences.
The
charter,
by
contrast,
specifically
addressed
as
its
audience
non-Indigenous
arbiters
of
colonial
power-and
not
to
educate
them
in
Indigenous
culture
but
to
demand
that
they
make
way
for
Indigenous
people
to
decide
how
their
cultures
will
be
engaged.
At
the
IAC,
the
charter's
announcement
linked
Indigenous
AIDS
activists
who
live
as
TwoSpirit,
mahn,
mnxhe,
fa'afafine,
and
takatapni,
as
well
as
people
identified
as
GLBT
or
queer.
Without
collapsing
their
differences,
they
crossed
many
sites
for
Indigenous
queer
stakes
to
lead
a
new
movement
for
the
health
of
their
own
and
all
Indigenous
communities.
This
is
the
work
of
a
transnational
Indigenous
politics
of
gender
and
sexuality,
and
it
arose
when
AIDS
redefined
kinship
and
solidarity
to
link
Indigenous
people
across
differences
in
pursuit
of
the
decolonization
of
health.

Challenging
Colonial
Biopolitics

The
decolonial
sexual
politics
of
Indigenous
AIDS
organizing
indicates
that
critiquing
colonial
heteropatriarchy
challenges
settler
colonialism
in
state
and
global
governance
while
mobilizing
new
movement
for
decolonization.
In
the
process,
Indigenous
AIDS
organizing
opens
the
colonial
biopolitics
of
modern
sexuality
and
global
health
to
critique.
Activists'
efforts
to
traverse
health
systems
mark
their
potential
co-optation
even
as
their
pursuit
of
Indigenous
decolonization
invites
those
systems'
disruption.

Global
health
governance
is
a
key
arena
of
the
continued
activity
of
colonial
biopolitics
and
its
naturalization.
Cindy
Patton
explains
that
colonialism
conditions
the
biopolitics
of
global
health
in
the
circulation
of
two
"thoughtstyles"
that
structured
World
Health
Organization
efforts
to
manage

300
public
health,
including
the
AIDS
pandemic.40
The
first
she
traces
to
the
discipline
of
tropical
medicine
as
it
historically
studied
the
effects
of
disease
on
the
traveling
European
body.
For
Patton,
tropical
thought-styles
define
a
normatively
European
human
body
as
endangered
by
movement
through
geographies
of
disease
inhabited
by
tropical
bodies.
In
this
narrative,
disease
is
localized,
while
the
subject
of
disease
travels.
She
contrasts
this
to
the
epidemiological
thought-style
extrapolated
from
the
rationalizing
scientific
method
of
public
health.
Here,
disease
agents
travel
along
vectors
to
create
nodes
of
illness
whose
chains
of
relationship
must
be
diagnosed
by
epidemiologists.
Within
epidemiology,
the
subject
of
disease
may
be
local,
but
diseases
are
mobile,
as
researchers
and
research
must
be.
For
Patton,
both
narratives
sustain
a
colonial
legacy,
in
the
racial
and
civilizational
reading
of
tropical
zones
of
inexorable
disease,
or
in
the
seemingly
deracialized
and
civilizational
imagining
of
a
world
united
by
disease
as
well
as
by
the
positionless
mobility
of
researchers
and
their
universal
claims
to
knowledge.
With
their
different
spatializations,
Patton
argues,
"these
two
major
scientific
thought-styles...
were
competing
ways
of
claiming
the
mantle
of
neutrality
that
invoking
science
affords."41
In
her
analysis,
colonial
discourses
and
institutional
practices
are
sustained
when
populations
marked
by
disease
become
the
focus
of
global
health
governance.

In
addressing
the
contrast
of
Africa
and
Asia
to
Europe
or
the
West"
in
global
health,
Patton
does
not
specify
the
locations
within
her
narratives
of
Indigenous
peoples.
Indigenous
peoples
appear
specifically
within
the
settler
colonial
biopolitics
of
global
health
as
populations
destined
for
elimination
by
the
arrival
of
colonial
modernity.
Tropical
thought
otherwise
might
seem
helpful
to
explain
colonial
accounts
of
Indigenous
peoples
as
essentially
localized.
But
while
colonial
medicine
narrated
Asia
and
Africa
as
hardier
in
relation
to
disease
than
the
European
body,
Indigenous
Americans
and
Pacific
Islanders
were
narrated
as
excessively
vulnerable
to
disease
and
inevitably

301
disappearing
in
the
wake
of
colonial
modernity's
expansion.
Global
health
narratives
may
rest
easily
in
the
settler
colonial
legacy
by
portraying
genocidal
diseases
among
Indigenous
peoples
as
nonhuman
and
bereft
of
agency,
thereby
performing
and
naturalizing
the
discourses
as
well
as
institutional
practices
of
settler
colonization
that
predict
Indigenous
elimination.
Narratives
of
Indigenous
peoples'
constitutive
isolation-geographic,
temporal,
cultural,
and
biological-code
with
narratives
of
elimination
to
frame
their
encounter
with
HIV/AIDS.
A
failure
of
global
health
programs
to
stem
the
epidemic
in
Africa
or
Asia
can
be
explained
by
tropicalizing
those
regions
as
sites
of
permanently
entrenched
disease.
But
those
same
programs'
failure
to
address
HIV/AIDS
among
Indigenous
peoples
can
appear
as
an
effect
of
those
peoples'
naturalized
marginality-too
isolated
to
be
served-conjoined
with
their
vulnerability
to
change
(i.e.,
to
death)
by
"contact,"
in
an
inevitable
march
to
extinction
that
even
modern
public-health
programs
cannot
stop.
Such
narratives
were
recalled
in
Canada
in
2009
amid
public-health
responses
to
the
H1N1
epidemic,
after
federal
agencies
delivered
to
rural
northern
Native
communities
vaccine
and
face
masks
accompanied
by
unmandated
body
bags.
Outraged
community
health
leaders
deplored
this
as
a
sign
that
the
very
agencies
charged
with
protecting
them
had
given
up
and
were
being
readied
for
their
deaths.
Here,
an
epidemiological
reading
that
public-health
measures
cannot
prevent
epidemic
in
rural
northern
Native
communities
appears
as
the
rationalizing
logic
of
a
settler
colonial
biopolitics.
Moreover,
the
very
settler
health
systems
that
"manage"
Indigenous
health
amid
continued
narration
of
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
participate
in
establishing
the
authority
of
global
health
programs
that
then
set
protocols
and
fund
procedures
through
which
settler
states,
as
"independent"
states
serving
their
"populations,"
manage
the
localization
of
pandemic.
State
and
international
health
governance
thus
becomes
a
medium
for
the
simultaneously
settler
colonial
and
global
biopolitics
contextualizing
the

302
relationship
of
Indigenous
peoples
to
disease
and
health.

This
book
has
argued
that
recollections
and
reimaginings
of
Native
knowledges
of
gender
and
sexuality
and
their
promotion
within
and
as
Native
activism
mark
and
destabilize
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism,
notably
in
the
form
of
settler
sexuality.
As
Indigenous
AIDS
activists
traversed
their
subjection
within
state
and
global
health
governance,
their
actions
denaturalized
the
ongoing
practice
of
settler
colonialism
and
its
animation
of
knowledge
claims
about
Indigenous
people.
Addressing
HIV/AIDS,
and
the
stigmas
and
marginalizations
that
would
prevent
this,
Indigenous
AIDS
activists
adapted
available
resources
in
ways
meant
not
to
result
in
co-opting
their
decolonial
aspirations
for
health
sovereignty.
As
Taiaiake
Alfred
and
Glen
Coulthard
observe,
co-optation
readily
arises
by
aligning
Indigenous
"sovereignty"
with
"recognition.""
Activists
at
the
Toronto
IAC
convened
at
the
Indigenous
pavilion
designated
by
the
IAC's
policy
of
including,
and
thus
containing,
critical
constituencies.
But
the
intervention
activists
brought
already
went
beyond
the
"recognition"
their
acts
were
granted
by
the
IAC
or
global
institutions.
As
in
Joanne
Barker's
critique
of
"recognition"
as
an
end
point
of
sovereignty
activism,
The
Toronto
Charter
does
not
hinge
on
state
or
global
institutions
recognizing
Indigenous
sovereignty,
although
members
may
interpret
it
that
way.43
The
charter
announces
that
Indigenous
peoples
already
know
and
practice
an
inherent
sovereignty
in
politics,
culture,
and
health
regardless
of
whether
settler
state
or
global
institutions
recognize
it.
On
this
basis,
they
demand
responsible
engagement
from
institutions
exerting
power
over
Indigenous
health
by
making
them
accountable
to
Indigenous
control
over
its
conditions
and
methods.
This
knowledge
that
Indigenous
sovereignty
never
disappeared
and
cannot
be
removed
already
inflected
AIDS
activist
promotion
of
Indigenous
epistemologies
and
methodologies
as
bases
for
health-largely
because
of
their
being
grounded
in
the
antiheteropatriarchal
legacies
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists

303
asserting
their
traditional
belonging
within
and
leadership
of
Native
decolonization
struggles.
Deployed
against
state
and
global
health
management,
such
claims
simultaneously
interrupt
logics
of
subjectification
and
population
control
in
colonial
biopolitics.
Thus,
while
this
effect
can
be
read
throughout
the
history
of
Indigenous
health
activism,
the
unique
foregrounding
in
Indigenous
AIDS
activism
of
gender
and
sexual
diversity
already
marked
settler
state
and
global
power
as
colonial
through
their
heteropatriarchal
formation.
Indigenous
AIDS
activism
thus
centers
Indigenous
epistemologies
that
dare
to
imagine
and
assert
autonomy
from
biopolitical
control
by
proposing
the
decolonization
of
gender
and
sexuality
and
the
pursuit
of
sovereignty
over
health.

I
highlight
these
possibilities
precisely
because
scholars
of
the
AIDS
pandemic,
and
specifically
within
Native
communities,
know
that
health
programs,
AIDS
activism,
and
their
amalgamation
readily
normalize
sexual,
gendered,
and
Indigenous
identities
and
require
critical
vigilance.44
The
history
of
Two-Spirit
identity
within
Native
AIDS
organizing
is
a
crucial
case
in
point.
Brian
Joseph
Gilley
explains
how
Two-Spirit
identity
became
useful
to
Native
AIDS
organizations
because
its
pantribalism
facilitated
claims
compatible
with
the
needs
of
Native
health
promotion
in
urban
Native
communities.45
Of
course,
even
here,
Two-Spirit
identity
remained
tied
to
tribal
specificity,
as
when
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
emphasized
national
differences
so
as
to
link
them
in
alliance.
Yet
Two-Spirit's
pantribalism
readily
appears
generic
rather
than
an
allying
of
sovereign
differences-and
productive
o f
colonial
governance
rather
than
displacing
of
it-if
health
programs
in
the
mode
of
liberal
multiculturalism
produce
"culturally
appropriate"
health
care
by
citing
the
term
to
define
an
object
of
Native
sexual
deviance
for
management.46
As
noted
earlier,
the
very
history
of
promoting
Two-Spirit
identity
to
challenge
erasure
of
Native
gay
and
bisexual
men
from
Native
health
projects
led
to
its
problematic
association
with
male
embodiment
and

304
same-sex
sexuality,
even
for
Native
organizers
and
health
scholars
who
know
the
term's
broader
meaning.47
Two-Spirit
identity
was
defined
by
the
diversely
gendered
participants
of
the
Third
International
Gathering
to
supplant
masculinist
bias
in
the
object
berdache
and
to
no
longer
marginalize
Native
lesbian
and
bisexual
women
and
trans
people.
That
Native
AIDS
activism
could
deploy
the
term
against
this
very
intention
is
a
poignant
example
of
the
insidious
convergence
of
the
need
Sharon
Day
and
Ron
Rowell
noted
at
an
early
date
to
address
Native
male
same-sex
sexuality,
and
the
interests
of
colonial
health
governance
to
define
Indigenous
and
racialized
bodies
by
their
practice
of
health-endangering
male
sexual
deviance,
precisely
by
portraying
them
through
the
seemingly
noncontrolling
population
marker
of
cultural
specificity.

Whether
or
how
colonial
governance
appears
within
public
health
citations
of
Two-Spirit
is
something
that
practitioners
and
scholars
of
Native
AIDS
organizing
investigate.
I
raise
the
issue
because
my
argument
in
this
chapter
has
taken
two
critical
directions
when
evaluating
the
defense
of
gender
and
sexual
diversity
as
tradition
in
Native
communities
defended
by
AIDS
activists.
The
first
was
a
historical
view
emphasizing
the
local
arenas,
contingent
relationships,
and
tactical
activist
projects
that
linked
Native
queer/
Two-
Spirit
and
AIDS
activisms.
Their
convergence
preceded
and
exceeds
any
potential
adoption
of
them
within
colonial
governance.
Distinctive
intellectual
histories
of
decolonizing
thought
and
movement
therefore
constitute,
and
resonate
within,
the
legacies
of
Native
queer/Two-Spirit
and
AIDS
activisms.
Resituating
current
practices
within
an
accountable
relationship
to
this
heritage,
without
any
guarantee,
remains
capable
of
interrupting
any
attempt
to
absorb
them
into
new
modes
of
colonial
governance
within
liberal
settler
multiculturalism
or
global
public
health.

The
second
critical
direction
of
my
analysis
has
evaluated
these
activist

305
histories
to
tell
a
story
that
merits
attention
in
non-Native
queer
and
AIDS
activisms,
where
it
demonstrates
the
impact
of
Native
activists
on
power
relations
in
settler
societies.
Unlike
non-Native
projects
in
these
areas,
Native
AIDS
activism
directly
denaturalized
settler
colonialism
as
a
condition
of
sexuality,
gender,
and
HIV/AIDS,
and
of
queer
and
AIDS
movements.
When
Native
activists
face
their
potential
complicities
in
colonial
power
and
its
reproduction,
these
are
important
because
they
persist
despite
Native
activists'
having
already
denaturalized
settler
colonialism
in
ways
that
non-Native
queer
and
AIDS
activists
have
barely
begun
to
imagine.
Comparisons
of
how
colonial
power
conditions
various
non-Native
and
Native
queer
or
AIDS
activisms
will
illuminate
their
degrees
of
commonality
or
distinction.
But
my
book
indicates
that
at
any
point
where
such
comparisons
might
be
made,
their
usefulness
will
be
interrupted
if
non-Natives
who
seek
them
do
not
first
disrupt
how
settler
colonialism
conditions
their
relationship
to
Native
peoples
and
their
thoughts
and
actions
in
that
relationship.

My
argument
also
addresses
Native
AIDS
organizers
by
asserting
that
a
critical
potential
in
their
work
already
exceeds
that
which
is
offered
by
AIDS
organizing
that
aligns
with
or
is
absorbed
within
normative
models
of
state
or
global
health
governance.
Recalling
and
asserting
subjugated
Indigenous
knowledges
and
transnational
alliances
in
pursuit
of
health
sovereignty
shatters
the
logics
of
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
and
c olonial
heteropatriarchy.
In
the
process,
centering
Indigenous
queer
people
as
leaders
defending
their
nations
undermines
sexism,
homophobia,
and
transphobia
while
centering
HIV/AIDS,
gender,
and
sexuality
in
Indigenous
struggles
for
decolonization.
Countering
assertions
that
would
place
Indigenous
peoples
as
being
anterior
to
modernity
or
eliminated
by
disease
and
conquest,
Indigenous
AIDS
activists
redefine
health
as
a
practice
of
decolonization
that
can
restore
Indigenous
governance.

306


307
THE
BIOPOLITICS
OF
SETTLER
COLONIALISM
continues
to
attempt
t o
eliminate
Native
nations
as
a
difference
that
can
disturb
the
finality
of
settlement,
precisely
by
regulating
them
within
a
state
of
exception.
As
Taiaiake
Alfred
notes,
an
illusory
sovereignty
may
be
transposed
onto
Native
natio ns
that
remains
contained
by
the
normative
power
of
Western
sovereignty
as
settler
colonialism.
When
Native
people
fight
the
AIDS
pandemic
and
its
conditioning
by
heteropatriarchy
in
Native
nations
and
settler
societies,
they
confront
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
within
global
health:
in
knowledges
of
disease
that
facilitate
global
governance
determined
by
settler
states
and
their
allies
for
ongoing
rule
of
Native
peoples
and
lands.
Yet
Andrea
Smith's
portrayal
of
Native
feminists
decolonizing
heteropatriarchal
leadership
in
Native
nations
and
challenging
settler
rule
highlights
Native
activists'
capacity
to
form
"unlikely
alliances,"
which
may
describe
how
Native
AIDS
activists
traverse
colonial
definitions
of
sovereignty
to
assert
control
over
health
while
respecting
queer
Native
leadership
in
work
for
decolonization.
As
they
practice
survival
in
the
face
of
pervasive
death
and,
at
times,
a
failure
of
leadership
within
Native
nations,
Native
AIDS
activists
intervene
in
spaces
managing
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
and
global
health
by
troubling
its
logics,
inspiring
broader
action,
and
demonstrating
their
capacity
to
think
beyond
the
national
and
heteropatriarchal
terms
of
settler
colonialism.

Their
work
also
addresses
the
globalization
of
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism.
I
write
this
book
at
a
time
Sherene
Razack
defines
by
the
"eviction"
of
Muslims
from
Western
law
into
a
state
of
exception.'
Razack
recognizes
that
in
Canada
and
the
United
States
this
follows
those
states
naturalizing
their
formation
by
white
settler
conquest.
On
this
basis,
we
may

308
note
that
when
Prime
Minister
Steven
Harper
differentiates
Canada
from
other
G20
members
in
possessing
no
colonial
history,"
or
when
President
George
W.
Bush
targets
Iraq
as
part
of
an
"axis
of
evil,"
we
can
ask
how
their
embodiment
of
Western
law
as
a
noncolonizing
project
that
naturally
recognizes
primitive
targets
for
civilizational
conquest
is
not
a
legacy
but
an
enactment
of
the
power
of
a
white
settler
state.
How
does
settler
colonization
of
Native
peoples
naturalize
white
settler
states
as
arbiters
of
Western
law
that
places
Muslims
and
Islam
in
a
state
of
exception?
As
Jennifer
Denetdale
asks,
how
does
this
then
compel
Native
peoples
or
any
racialized
subjects
of
white
settler
rule
to
participate?2
And,
as
Judith
Butler
and
Dana
Olwan
ask,
how
does
this
condition
the
restriction
of
speech
in
the
United
States
and
Canada
criticizing
the
Israeli
state's
racialized
settlement
of
Palestinian
territory-
notably,
if
Palestinians
and
Indigenous
Americans
name
similar
experiences
of
racism
and
settler
colonialism
and
join
in
solidarityj3
We
must
ask
how
the
biopolitics
of
settler
colonialism
in
the
Americas
creates
resonances
among
these
processes
that
also
inform
queer
studies.
Narratives
protecting
Western
citizenship
from
mobile
"savages"
and
"terrorists"
justify
projecting
military
power
to
contain
and
displace
subject
populations
and
to
control
their
lands.
Thickly
gendered
narratives
justify
heteropatriarchal
conquest
and
civilizing
of
perverse,
barbaric
manhood
and
abjected,
voiceless
womanhood
within
a
new
moral
order.
Queers
within
a
white
settler
state
then
become
modern
through
homonationalist
participation
in
colonial
and
imperial
rule
that
awards
citizenship
for
defending
the
state
and
educating
subject
peoples
in
civilizational
values,
including
sexual
modernity.
If
these
comments
evoke
Afghanistan,
Iraq,
Palestine,
or
Guantanamo
Bay,
each
readily
transposes
onto
the
past
and
present
rule
of
white
settler
societies
over
Native
peoples,
and
onto
investments
by
non-Native
or
Native
people
to
dismiss
them
by
progressing
into
a
heteropatriarchal
civilizational
future
at
home"
and
"abroad."

309
 As
Butler,
Puar,
Smith,
and
a
broad
range
of
queer
studies
scholars
point
out,
these
matters
constitute
the
conditions
of
the
field
and
its
necessary
concern,
and
failing
to
address
them
will
naturalize
settlement
once
again
in
the
worlds
queer
studies
examines.'
The
critical
models
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists,
Indigenous
feminist
and
queer
theorists,
and
allied
projects
call
on
non-Native
queer
people
to
new
action
to
challenge
settler
colonialism
in
the
settler
state
and
global
arenas.
Non-Native
queers
can
evaluate
their
work
by
the
degree
to
which
it
troubles
settler
colonialism
while
being
held
accountable
to
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists
and
allied
critics.

Having
questioned
desires
to
belong
to
the
settler
state
or
to
possess
Native
history,
non-Native
queers
can
consider
the
groundlessness
that
follows
critiquing
settlement
as
a
condition
of
their
existence.
My
words
here
are
inspired
in
part
by
theories
of
emplacement
and
mobility
in
queer
migration
and
diaspora
studies.
Critically
engaging
histories
of
colonial,
national,
and
racial
violence
and
their
survival
has
engendered
mobile
and
transformative
modes
of
decolonization
for
queers
of
color
in
diaspora.s
Such
work
links
to
Indigenous
queer
decolonizations
of
Indigenous
nations
by
acting
from
within
mobile
alliances.
I
invoke
groundlessness
to
invite
new
theory
to
displace
settler
imaginaries
among
queer
non-Natives.
By
detaching
from
colonial
desires
to
belong
to
stolen
land,
the
settler
state,
or
their
projections
into
global
possibilities,
queer
non-Natives
can
release
imaginaries
of
indigeneity
that
formed
to
resolve
the
contradictions
of
settlers
possessing
stolen
land
and
Native
peoples'
pasts
and
futures.
Whitesupremacist
settler
colonization
in
North
America
has
produced
distinct
relationships
to
Indigenous
heritage
for
people
seeking
this
in
any
region,
or
indeed
in
multiple
locations
at
once.
Without
attempting
to
define
or
contain
so
many
experiences,
I
consider
an
image
that
perhaps
can
help
us
imagine
what
must
take
place
for
us
to
be
able
to
connect
in
this
place
across
our
differences.
In
the
space
that
opens
up

310
when
non-Natives
release
attachments
to
place,
while
Native
people
contest
how
place
might
be
known
or
controlled,
a
possibility
of
allied
work
for
decolonization
grows.

Among
many
routes
such
work
might
take,
I
return
to
where
this
project
began:
engaging
conversations
as
the
spaces
between
non-Native
and
Native
queer
people
that
shift
when
made
accountable
to
Native
queer
and
Two-
Spirit
people's
pursuit
of
decolonization
for
their
nations.
I
recall
the
difference
once
I
engaged
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
on
these
terms.
I
learned
for
the
first
time
about
Native
politics
and,
consequently,
about
myself
without
my
life
being
central,
and
with
the
conditions
creating
my
life
being
displaced.
I
experienced
a
decentering
of
non-Native
interests
in
conversation
with
Native
people
as
a
prerequisite
for
accountable
alliance.
Among
the
many
threads
in
Native
studies
examining
alliance,
I
invoke
one
that
raises
the
stakes
for
theorizing
alliance
as
conversation
through
an
image
by
Lisa
Brooks,
when
she
likens
critical
dialogues
by
Native
scholars
in
Native
studies
to
conversation
at
the
kitchen
table.
Tracing
this
image
to
joy
Harjo,
Brooks
describes
Native
literary
criticism
as
having
arisen
in
the
form
of
dialogues
across
communities
that
recalled
to
her
mind
family
reunions
and
community
meetings
where
Native
people
gather
around
the
kitchen
table
to
cook,
eat,
tell
stories,
and
argue
politics.'
At
one
point,
Brooks
offers
this
image
to
remind
her
readers
of
what
many
Native
literary
critics
say
sabotaged
Elvira
Pulitano's
attempt
to
theorize
Native
American
literature:
Pulitano's
self-
recognition
as
a
non-Native
scholar
who
lived
far
from
any
dialogue
with
the
Native
writers
and
communities
she
was
examining.'
This
location
let
her
represent
their
works
in
ways
entirely
out
of
sync
with
the
stakes
brought
to
those
works
by
Native
writers
and
readers,
including
scholars
in
Native
studies.
But
Brooks
then
says
of
Pulitano,
if
she
had
brought
her
work
to
the
kitchen
table
...
she
certainly
would
have
become
aware
of
those
implications."'
In
such
a
literal
or
imagined
space,
Pulitano's
work
could
have
become
a
site
of

311
struggle,
teased
or
argued
over;
or,
Brooks
says,
she
might
have
been
left
alone
until
she
prepared
something
in
the
kitchen
that
could
be
shared.
Whatever
Pulitano
were
to
say
while
working
in
that
space
of
Native
dialogue,
it
would
certainly
remain
hers,
to
share
and
also
to
be
responsible
for
in
any
subsequent
debate.
Brooks
ends
by
observing
that
Pulitano
needed
her
claims
to
be
deliberated
in
Native
space
not
to
serve
Native
people:
you
see,"
she
says,
"I
am
advocating
that
she
should
have
come
to
the
kitchen
table
not
for
our
sake,
but
her
own."

When
I
think
back
to
when
I
first
was
invited
to
adopt
Native
culture
as
queer
history,
I
recall
feeling
a
sharp,
and
surprising
desire
to
accept,
which
I
nevertheless
experienced
at
a
certain
distance,
as
if
this
were
someone
else's
feeling
transposed
onto
my
own.
Perhaps
my
response
was
owing
to
the
concurrent
presence
of
a
stronger
and,
it
seemed,
more
proximal
feeling,
of
queasiness;
which
grew
more
disturbing
as
friends
and
communities
tried
to
compel
me
to
join
practices
that
I
somehow
knew
to
be
deeply
problematic.
Surrounding
all
these
feelings,
I
also
recall
an
awareness
that
in
retrospect
I
would
call
skepticism;
for
I
also
recognized
that
to
accept
what
was
being
offered
would
not
result
in
my
forming
any
relationships
with
Native
people.
Queer
non-Natives
in
the
late-twentieth-century
United
States
regularly
found
everyday
speech,
activist
agendas,
and
historical
and
anthropological
writing
that
invited
them
to
form
a
relationship
with
indigeneity
at
a
sustained
distance.
For
some
queer
non-Natives,
this
made
no
difference
if
they
found
indigeneity
more
useful
to
them
in
the
form
of
history.
Yet,
for
others,
accepting
Native
history
only
stoked
a
hunger
to
possess
more.
Native
history
was
easy
to
consume,
prepackaged
in
settler
narratives;
yet
no
degree
of
consumption
placed
non-Natives
in
greater
relationship
with
queer
Native
people,
or
indeed
any
Native
people,
across
the
distances
of
geography,
community,
and
politics
that
already
divided
them.
With
the
benefit
of
reflection
on
these
processes,
I
now
think
I
understand
some
of
the
desires
of

312
non-Native
queers
to
find
themselves
in
Native
religion,
to
form
multiracial,
global
movements
that
incorporate
Native
people,
or
to
define
Native
truth:
they
desire
to
be
even
closer
to
Native
people
than
adopting
Native
culture
as
their
own
history
satisfies.
I
fear
that
their
desires
will
perform
the
coloniality
that
initiated
them
if
they
include,
or
join,
Native
people
after
being
motivated
to
adopt
Native
culture
as
queer
history.

These
are
not
the
motivations
to
enter
relationship
that
Brooks
invites.
Her
image
of
the
kitchen
table
evokes
a
spatial
and
interpersonal
metaphor
of
the
dynamics
of
conversation.
And
yet,
this
space
remains
distinct
from
the
conversations
this
book
traced.
My
analysis
shows
that
non-Native
and
Native
queer
people
have
entered
into
conversation
as
a
normative
effect
of
settler
colonialism.
Their
"conversations"
constitute
them
in
power-laden
discursive
and
institutional
relationships,
whether
they
wish
this
or
not.
In
this
analysis,
conversation
is
not
something
that
can
be
sought
out,
as
if
it
were
not
already
taking
place;
nor
can
it
be
absolutely
refused.
Yet,
critically
engaging
such
a
conversational
relationship
to
challenge
its
colonial
formation
has
defined
the
survival
work
and
activism
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people;
and
this
book
too
has
contributed
to
troubling
that
formation
as
a
non-Native
queer
response
to
the
model
of
Native
activists.
Critically
participating
in
and
displacing
the
conversations
that
condition
non-Native
and
Native
queer
modernities
can
occur
now,
from
within
ongoing
relationships
that
we
learn
to
engage
differently.
Doing
so
may
incite
new
dialogues
among
Native
and
non-Native
people.
But
non-Natives
likely
will
not
find
these
dialogues
taking
place
at
the
kitchen
table.
The
conversations
that
already
powerfully
constitute
them
are
the
settler
colonial
power
relations
that
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people
displace
by
gathering
at
the
kitchen
table
of
Two-Spirit
organizing,
and
all
forms
of
queer
Native
belonging
within
Native
communities.
All
normative
modes
through
which
non-Native
and
Native
queer
people
appear
to
be
in
conversation
must
be
disrupted
for
dialogue
to

313
occur
from
the
decolonizing
stakes
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activists.
My
experience
has
taught
me
that
if
this
disruption
occurs,
it
might
follow
non-Native
queers
first
critiquing
settler
colonialism
in
the
power-laden
conversations
that
already
constrain
them.
Their
critical
work
will
mark
them
as
accountable
to
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
activism,
and
they
may
be
drawn
into
collaborations
with
Native
people
who
work
with
them
in
the
fraught
spaces
of
a
settler
colonial
society.
Such
collaborations
must
be
sufficient
for
non-Native
queers
who
wish
to
act
as
allies
to
Native
decolonization
struggles.
No
greater
proximity
to
Native
cultural
space
is
necessary,
nor
necessarily
helpful
for
them
to
desire.
If
non-Natives
ever
do
get
invited
to
work
or
talk
around
the
kitchen
table,
that
will
follow,
and
depend
on,
their
having
demonstrated
a
prior
and
sustained
commitment
to
start
and
end
their
day
elsewhere,
in
the
normatively
non-Native
spaces
where
they
pursue
the
work
of
unsettling
settler
colonialism.

Given
the
lack
of
commitment
to
Indigenous
decolonization
struggles
in
queer
politics,
clearly
there
is
work
to
be
done.
This
book's
critique
focused
on
denaturalizing
settler
colonialism,
but
not
to
posit
this
as
an
end.
It
would
be
all
too
easy
for
non-Natives
to
merely
unthink
their
relationship
to
settler
colonialism
rather
than
act
in
relationship
to
others
in
struggle.
This
book
argued
instead
that
denaturalizing
settler
colonialism
will
displace
any
project
that
grounds
queer
life
within
the
state,
institutions,
cultures,
histories,
or
futures
of
a
settler
society.
Any
such
project
will
be
opened
to
critique
and
transformation
once
settler
colonialism
is
denaturalized.
What
happens
after
such
radical
change
will
be
something
we
learn
in
practice.
Returning
to
struggle
in
the
power-laden
spaces
constituted
by
settler
colonialism
holds
queer
activism
and
scholarship
responsible
to
the
critical
models
of
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
people,
whose
self-determining
transformations
of
colonial
knowledges
and
power
relations
create
conditions
for
non-Native

314
and
Native
people
to
form
allied
work
for
Indigenous
decolonization.

315
I
WRITE
WITH
RESPECT
FOR
ALL
among
whom
I
have
lived
while
preparing
this
book.
My
primary
work
took
place
on
the
lands
of
the
Ohlone,
Dakota,
and
Mohawk
peoples:
near
the
bluff
where
Santa
Cruz
Mission
housed
forcibly
relocated
Ohlone
people;
near
the
confluence
of
the
Mississippi
and
Minnesota
rivers,
the
spiritual
homeland
of
the
Dakota
people
and
the
site
of
memorials
to
internees
at
the
Pike
Island
concentration
camp
established
after
the
Dakota
War
of
1862;
and
near
Tyendinega
Mohawk
territory
on
land
subsequently
taken
by
the
United
Empire
Loyalists.
Naming
these
storied
places
and
their
nations
reminds
of
my
responsibility
to
act
in
response
to
not
only
them
but
all
ongoing
struggles
by
Native
peoples
on
lands
that,
however
much
they
might
have
changed,
remain
Indigenous.

Among
many
constituencies
to
whom
I
am
responsible,
I
acknowledge
first
the
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
organizers
whose
work
I
discuss:
American
Indian
Gays
and
Lesbians
(Minneapolis),
Bay
Area
American
Indian
Two-
Spirits
(San
Francisco),
Canadian
Aboriginal
AIDS
Network
(Vancouver),
Gay
American
Indians
(San
Francisco),
Healing
Our
Spirit
(Vancouver),
Indigenous
People's
Task
Force
(Minneapolis),
International
Indigenous
People's
Summit
(Toronto
2006;
Mexico
City
2008),
International
Two-Spirit
Gathering,
National
Native
American
AIDS
Prevention
Center
(Denver),
Ontario
Aboriginal
AIDS
Strategy,
2-Spirits
(Toronto),
and
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe
(New
York
City).
I
thank
those
historical
and
current
members
and
Native
scholars
of
their
work
who
engaged
my
thinking
and,
at
times,
provided
crucial
feedback
that
significantly
shifted
my
ideas
and
writing:
Randy
Burns,
Sharon
Day,
Clyde
M.
Hall,
Ken
Harper,
Anguksuar
Richard
LaFortune,
Kent
Lebsock,
Nick
Metcalf,
Yvonne
Davis,
Wesley
Thomas,
Irene
Vernon,
and
Art
Zoccole.

316
 My
response
to
Native
queer
and
Two-Spirit
organizing
benefited
from
a
remarkable
moment
in
Native
studies
when
Indigenous
feminist
and
queer
scholarship
highlighted
gender
and
sexuality
and
Native
and
non-Native
scholars
in
response
forged
the
intellectual
and
political
ferment
in
which
this
book
took
shape.
For
their
leadership
and
our
dialogues
I
thank
Chadwick
Allen,
Clive
Aspin,
Jennifer
Nez
Denetdale,
Qwo-Li
Driskill,
Michelle
Erai,
Chris
Finley,
Brian
Joseph
Gilley,
Mishuana
Goeman,
Jodi
Byrd,
Lisa
Kahaleole
Hall,
Sharon
Holland,
Daniel
Heath
Justice,
J.
Kehaulani
Kauanui,
Dan
Taulapapa
McMullin,
Mark
Rifkin,
Bethany
Schneider,
David
Shorter,
Audra
Simpson,
Andrea
Smith,
and
Lisa
Tatonetti.
I
thank
all
organizers
of
the
Native
American
and
Indigenous
Studies
Association
for
creating
a
dynamic
space
for
Indigenous
scholars
and
Indigenous
knowledge
production,
where
my
work
received
indispensable
critique
in
its
final
years
of
preparation.
I
thank
Michelle
Erai
and
Mishuana
Goeman
in
particular
for
helping
me
compose
the
title
of
the
book.

I
acknowledge
the
scholars
and
activists
whose
antiracist
engagements
with
queer
politics
sparked
the
critical
thinking
that
led
to
this
book.
Among
my
scholarly
interlocutors
I
give
deep
thanks
to
Roderick
Ferguson,
Gayatri
Gopinath,
Eithne
Luibheid,
Martin
F.
Manalansan
IV,
Kevin
Mumford,
Jose
Esteban
Munoz,
Juana
Maria
Rodriguez,
and
Nayan
Shah
for
the
inspiration
their
work
continues
to
offer.
For
our
activist
and
scholarly
collaborations
in
California
I
thank
organizers
of
the
University
of
California,
Santa
Cruz
student
group
Queers
of
Color
and
Rhane
Alexander,
Kai
Azada,
Richard
Baldwin,
Meliza
Banales,
Catalina
Berumen,
K.
C.
Bly,
Clara
Brandt,
Scottie
Brookie,
Aaron
Brown,
Jorge
Bru,
Robert
Imada,
Mark
Krikava,
Kwai
Lam,
Susan
Nilsson,
Sharon
Papo,
and
Corey
Tax.

For
their
many
years
of
engagement
in
my
work
I
thank
the
members
of
the
Radical
Faerie
circles
of
Santa
Cruz
and
San
Francisco,
the
organization

317
Nomenus,
and
the
residents
of
Short
Mountain
Sanctuary
(Tennessee)
and
Wolf
Creek
Sanctuary
(Oregon).
For
assistance
in
research
I
thank
Deb
Abbot
and
students
and
staff
at
the
UCSC
Lionel
Cantu
LGBTI
Resource
Center,
as
well
as
directors
and
staff
at
the
Santa
Cruz
LGBT
Community
Center
(1988-
99)
and
The
Diversity
Center
(since
1999).

I
am
grateful
for
financial
support
from
the
UCSC
Graduate
Division
and
Department
of
Anthropology;
Macalester
College;
the
Mellon
Foundation;
and
the
Faculty
of
Arts
and
Sciences
and
Department
of
Gender
Studies
at
Queen's
University.
I
am
grateful
to
the
Phil
Zwickler
Memorial
Foundation
for
receipt
of
two
Zwickler
Research
Grants
to
study
at
the
Human
Sexuality
Collection
of
the
Cornell
University
Library,
where
Brenda
Marston
offered
invaluable
assistance.
I
received
archival
research
support
at
the
Gay
and
Lesbian
Historical
Society
of
Northern
California;
the
Cana
than
Gay
and
Lesbian
Archives;
and
the
Tretter
Collection
at
the
University
of
Minnesota.
I
especially
thank
jean
Tretter
for
his
help
and
Anguksuar
Richard
LaFortune
and
Randy
Burns
for
their
public
donations
to
the
Tretter
Collection's
Two-
Spirit
Archive.

This
project
originated
as
a
dissertation
at
the
University
of
California,
Santa
Cruz,
where
my
advisers
Anna
Tsing,
Lisa
Rofel,
and
Gayle
Rubin
provided
invaluable
guidance.
For
assistance
in
my
home
departments
of
anthropology
and
women's
studies
and
in
linked
departments
I
thank
Bettina
Aptheker,
Nancy
Chen,
James
Clifford,
Michael
Cowan,
Donna
Haraway,
Ann
Kingsolver,
Paul
Ortiz,
Nancy
Stoller,
and
Patricia
Zavella.
Many
colleagues
in
Santa
Cruz,
Minneapolis/St.
Paul,
and
beyond
gave
crucial
scholarly
engagement.
For
a
lovely
writing
group
I
thank
Bianet
Castellanos,
Kale
Fajardo,
Karen
Ho,
Hoon
Song,
and
David
Valentine.
Deep
thanks
also
to
Anna
Lorraine
Anderson,
Darshan
Campos,
Beth
Cleary,
Ulrika
Dahl,
Aureliano
DeSoto,
John
L.
Jackson,
Debra
Klein,
Ellen
Lewin,
Adriana

318
Garriga
Lopez,
Tera
Martin,
Lance
McCready,
Karen
Nakamura,
Joan
Ostrove,
Peter
Rachleff,
Lena
Sawyer,
Omise'eke
Natasha
Tinsley,
Deb
Vargas,
Michelle
Wright,
and
Cynthia
Wu.

For
invitations
to
share
my
work,
I
thank
Marc
Schachter,
Robin
Weigman,
and
Karen
Krahulik
of
the
departments
of
Women's
Studies
and
Romance
Studies
and
the
Sexuality
Studies
Program
at
Duke
University;
at
the
University
of
Minnesota,
Twin
Cities,
William
Beeman,
Karen
Ho,
and
David
Valentine
in
the
Department
of
Anthropology,
Jigna
Desai
in
the
Department
of
Gender,
Women,
and
Sexuality
Studies,
and
Kevin
Murphy
and
Anna
Clark
of
the
Global
Sexualities
Research
Group;
William
Leap
and
the
organizers
of
Lavender
Languages
and
Linguistics;
Theresa
McCarthy
and
the
Haudenosaunee
Native
American
Studies
Research
Workshop
at
Buffalo
University;
and
Ann
Kingsolver
and
Drue
Barker
for
inviting
me
to
present
the
inaugural
Alice
Bee
Kasakoff
Lecture
in
Native
American
and
Gender
Studies
sponsored
by
the
anthropology
and
women's
studies
departments
at
the
University
of
South
Carolina.

I
am
thrilled
to
finish
this
book
with
faculty
and
graduate
students
of
the
Department
of
Gender
Studies
and
Graduate
Program
in
Cultural
Studies
at
Queen's
University
and
with
staff
and
community
at
the
Four
Directions
Aboriginal
Students
Centre.
I
thank
Janice
Brant,
Paul
Carl,
Dia
da
Costa,
Richard
Day,
Karen
Dubinsky,
Terrie
Easter-Sheen,
Janice
Helland,
Janice
Hill,
Margaret
Little,
Emily
MacGillivray,
Sam
McKegney,
Katherine
McKittrick,
Dana
Olwan,
Ishita
Pande,
Sarita
Srivistava,
and
Dana
Wesley
for
supporting
and
informing
my
work.

I
could
not
have
asked
for
a
more
enthusiastic,
patient,
and
critically
engaged
team
than
the
editors
and
production
staff
at
the
University
of
Minnesota
Press.
I
am
deeply
grateful
to
Richard
Morrison
and
Jason

319
Weidemann
for
their
sustained
support.
I
offer
my
lasting
thanks
to
the
First
Peoples
publication
initiative
and
the
Mellon
Foundation
for
sponsoring
this
book,
and
to
Natasha
Varner
and
Abby
Mogollon
for
all
their
work.
I
also
thank
Nadia
Myre
for
use
of
her
beautiful
visual
art
in
the
cover
design.

Friendship,
love,
and
mindfulness
kept
me
and
my
work
going.
I
offer
my
lasting
gratitude
to
Kerry
and
David
Avilla,
Jerry
Burg,
Richard
Gomen,
London
Elise,
K'Lyn
and
Phil
Matthews,
Robert
W.
and
Bonnie
Morgensen,
Mike
and
Shannon
Morgensen,
Eric
Reed,
Michelle
Rosenthal,
Cy
Sugita,
and
Katherine
Thanas.
A
special
thank
you
goes
to
my
old
friends
Rev
and
Alexander,
without
whom
I
certainly
never
would
have
finished.
Most
of
all,
I
thank
my
mother,
Lyn
Lauria,
for
life,
leadership,
and
boundless
support.

320
Preface

z.
Razack,
"Introduction:
When
Place
Becomes
Race."

2.
King,
Theory
in
Its
Feminist
Travels.

3.
Smith,
Native
Americans
and
the
Christian
Right.

4.
"Cisgender,"
synonymous
with
"non-transgender,"
also
indicates
the
privilege
that
accrues
in
a
transphobic
society
to
persons
whose
gender
assignment
at
birth
and
gender
identity
match.

5.
See,
for
example,
Pratt,
"Identity:
Skin
Blood
Heart";
Visweswaran,
Fictions
of
Feminist
Ethnography.

6.
I
received
this
training
within
joint
doctoral
study
in
the
departments
of
anthropology
and
women's
studies
at
the
University
of
California,
Santa
Cruz.
Te xts
from
this
context
that
reflect
the
methodologies
I
invoke
include
Alexander
and
Mohanty,
"Introduction:
Genealogies,
Legacies,
Movements";
Berube,
"How
Gay
Stays
White
and
What
Kind
of
White
It
Stays";
Frankenberg,
White
Women,
Race
Matters;
Gluck
et
al.,
"Whose
Feminism,
Whose
History%";
Luibheid,
Entry
Denied;
Martin
and
Mohanty,
"Feminist
Politics";
Mohanty,
"Cartographies
of
Struggle";
Trinh,
Woman,
Native,
Other;
Zavella,
"Feminist
Insider
Dilemmas."
Notably,
transnational
feminist
critics
highlight
inequalities
that
persist
despite
desire
for
feminist
collaboration,
and
they
call
for
forthright
engagement
in
those
sustained
power
relations.
See
Alexander
and
Mohanty,
"Introduction";
Desai
et
al.,
"Disavowed
Legacies
and
Honorable
Thievery."

7.
The
identities
of
persons
referenced
only
in
ethnographic
stories
have

321
b e e n
concealed,
at
times
by
use
of
a
pseudonym
or
composite
characterization.
The
names
of
major
organizations
referenced
in
ethnographic
stories
have
not
been
changed.

Introduction

i.
I
use
"Native"
and
"Indigenous"
interchangeably
as
terms
of
collective
identity
across
sustained
national
differences,
and,
at
times,
as
normative
locations
within
settler
colonial
law
or
society.
In
reference
to
the
United
States
I
emphasize
"Native,"
which
also
invites
the
common
comparative
term
"non-Native."
I
use
"Indigenous"
to
reference
its
preferential
use
for
identity,
or
when
gesturing
beyond
contemporary
U.S.
politics,
whether
to
refer
to
other
eras
or
to
locations
or
relationships
that
go
beyond
the
United
States.

2.
Smith,
Decolonizing
Methodologies;
Warrior,
Tribal
Secrets.

3.
Wolfe,
"Structure
and
Event,"
103.

4.
Smith,
Native
Americans
and
the
Christian
Right.

5.
Smith,
"Queer
Theory
and
Native
Studies,"
42-44.

6.
Driskill
et
al.,
eds.,
Queer
Indigenous
Studies;
Justice
and
Cox,
eds.,
Queering
Native
Literature;
Justice,
Rifkin,
and
Schneider,
eds.,
Sexuality,
Nationality,
Indigeneity.

7.
Duggan,
The
Twilight
of
Equality;
Murphy,
Ruiz,
and
Serlin,
eds.,
Queer
Futures;
Puar,
Terrorist
Assemblages.

8.
Puar,
Terrorist
Assemblages,
11,
24.

9.
See
Morgensen,
"Settler
Homonationalism."

322
 io.
I
redefine
Robert
Young's
formulation
to
name
a
recursive
relationship
of
settler
subjects
to
inheriting
and
transcending
indigeneity,
as
also
examined
by
Philip
Deloria
and
Renee
Bergland
(Bergland,
The
National
Uncanny;
Deloria,
Playing
Indian;
Young,
Colonial
Desire).

ii.
Butler,
Precarious
Life;
Butler,
"The
Question
of
Social
Transformation";
Foucault,
The
History
of
Sexuality:
Volume
1.

112.
Tsing,
Friction.

13.
King,
Theory
in
Its
Feminist
Travels.

114.
Grahn,
Another
Mother
Tongue.
The
book
received
the
19
85
American
Library
Association's
Stonewall
Book
Prize.

15.
Ibid.,
71-72.

1[6.
Ibid.,
72.

1[7.
Bergland,
The
National
Uncanny.

118.
Grahn,
Another
Mother
Tongue,
105.

zg.
Katz,
Gay
American
History,
333
(emphasis
in
the
original),
original
publication:
Gengle,
"Reclaiming
the
Old
New
World."

20.
Gay
American
Indians
and
Roscoe,
Living
the
Spirit.

211.
Midnight
Sun,
"Sex/Gender
Systems
in
Native
North
America";
Kenney,
"Tinselled
Bucks";
Hall,
"Children
of
Grandmother
Moon";
Pahe,
"Speaking
Up."

22.
Hall,
"Children
of
Grandmother
Moon,"
104.

323
 23.
Ramirez,
Native
Hubs.

24.
Burns,
"Preface,"
4-5.

25.
Hall,
"Children
of
Grandmother
Moon,"
101,
99.

26.
Given
more
space,
a
productive
reading
could
examine
Grahn's
Another
Mother
Tongue,
Allen's
The
Sacred
Hoop,
and
the
relationship
Allen
and
Grahn
shared
prior
to
their
writing.
Grahn
references
this
when
recalling
the
home
invasion
of
the
house
she
and
Allen
shared,
and
their
response
by
joining
lesbian-feminist
comrades
in
spiritual
ritual.
Grahn
portrays
this
ritual
as
evincing
Allen's
relationship
to
Laguna
Pueblo-a
relationship
to
land
she
does
not
grant
to
the
others-in
contrast
to
the
borderless
lesbian
spirituality
of
non-Native
participants.

27.
Allen,
"Some
Like
Indians
Endure,"
in
Gay
American
Indians
and
Roscoe,
Living
the
Spirit,
9.

28.
Weaver,
That
the
People
Might
Live;
Tatonetti,
"The
Emergence
and
Importance
of
Oueer
American
Indian
Literature."

29.
Chrystos,
"Today
Was
a
Bad
Day
like
TB."

30.
See
Roscoe,
Queer
Spirits;
Roscoe,
The
Zuni
Man-Woman;
Roscoe,
"The
Geography
of
Gender."

311.
In
addition
to
Living
the
Spirit
and
The
Sacred
Hoop,
see
Brant,
A
Gathering
of
Spirit;
Chrystos,
Dream
On;
Jacobs,
Thomas,
and
Lang,
eds.,
Two-Spirit
People.

32.
On
San
Francisco
Bay
Area
histories
of
sexual
minority
and
queer
community,
see
Boyd,
Wide-Open
Town;
Stryker
and
Buskirk,
eds.,
Gay
by

324
the
Bay.
On
histories
of
Bay
Area
American
Indian
communities,
see
Intertribal
Friendship
House,
Urban
Voices;
Ramirez,
Native
Hubs.
Despite
repeated
return
to
Bay
Area
locations,
this
book
ultimately
displaces
regionalism
by
examining
border-crossing
projects
that
condition
any
local
activity.
"San
Francisco
Bay
Area"
in
this
book
also
will
refer
to
the
North
Bay
counties
of
Sonoma
and
Napa
and
to
the
Monterey
Bay
counties
of
Santa
Cruz
and
Monterey
because
they
are
interlinked
with
the
economic,
political
and
cultural
life
of
the
Bay
Area
proper.

33.
Towle
and
Morgan,
"Romancing
the
Transgender
Native";
Jacobs,
"Is
t h e
'North
American
Berdache'
Merely
a
Phantom
in
the
Imagination
of
Western
Social
Further
use
of
berdache
to
define
transgender
subjects
appears
in
Cromwell,
Transmen
and
FTM's.
Mark
Rifkin
examines
Feinberg's
interpretations
of
berdache
in
Rifkin,
When
Did
Indians
Become
Straight?.

34.
Den
Ouden,
Beyond
Conquest,
40.

35.
Wolfe,
"Structure
and
Event."

36.
See,
for
example,
Kauanui,
Hawaiian
Blood;
Lawrence,
"Real"
Indians
and
Others.

37.
O'Brien,
Pirsting
and
Lasting.

38.
Turner,
This
Is
Not
a
Peace
Pipe;
Lawrence,
"Real"
Indians
and
Others.

39.
Alfred,
Peace,
Power;
Righteousness;
Brooks,
The
Common
Pot;
Deloria,
Indians
in
Unexpected
Places;
Denetdale,
Reclaiming
Navajo
History;
Warrior,
The
People
and
the
Word;
Wilson,
Remember
This!.

40.
Hobsbawm
and
Ranger,
eds.,
The
Invention
of
Tradition;
Horsman,
Race
and
Manifest
Destiny.

325
 411.
Cox,
Mating
White
Noise.

42.
See
Hardt
and
Negri,
Empire;
Wallerstein,
World-Systems
Analysis;
Wolf,
Europe
and
the
People
without
History;
and
Wynter,
We
Must
Learn
to
Sit
Down
Together
and
Talk
about
a
Little
Culture.

43.
Lowery,
Lumbee
Indians
in
the
Jim
Crow
South;
Miles
and
Holland,
eds.,
Crossing
Waters,
Crossing
Worlds;
Naylor,
African
Cherokees
in
Indian
Territory.

44.
Lawrence
and
Dua,
"Decolonizing
Antiracism";
Trask,
"Settlers
of
Color
and
'Immigrant'
Hegemony."

45.
Sharma
and
Wright,
"Decolonizing
Resistance,
Challenging
Colonial
States."

46.
See
Alfred,
Wasa'se;
Brooks,
The
Common
Pot;
Bruyneel,
The
Third
Space
of
Sovereignty;
Smith,
Native
Americans
and
the
Christian
Right.

47.
Lawrence
acknowledges
this
critique
in
Amadahy
and
Lawrence,
"Indigenous
Peoples
and
Black
People
in
Canada."

48.
Fujikane
and
Okamura,
eds.,
Asian
Settler
Colonialism.
I
invoke
here
efforts
by
Dana
Olwan
and
the
organization
Incite!
Women
of
Color
Against
Violence.
See
Olwan,
"Between
Settlement
and
Indigeneity";
http://www.incite-national.org.

49.
Lawrence,
"Real"
Indians
and
Others;
Lowery,
Lumbee
Indians
in
the
Jim
Crow
South.

50.
Saldana-Portillo,
The
Revolutionary
Imagination
in
Latin
America
and
the
Age
of
Development.

326
 511.
Even
as
I
ask
how
inheriting
settler
colonialism
produces
non-Natives,
I
learn
from
Native
critiques
of
colonial,
racial,
imperial,
and
heteropatriarchal
power
in
Native
communities.
See
Alfred,
Peace,
Power;
Righteousness;
Denetdale,
"Securing
Navajo
National
Boundaries."

52.
Smith,
Native
Americans
and
the
Christian
Right.

53.
Driskill
et
al.,
"The
Revolution
Is
for
Everyone."

54.
See
the
work
of
Coalition
de
Derechos
Humanos:
www.derechoshumanosaz
.net;
O'ohdham
Solidarity
Across
Borders
Collective:
oodhamsolidarity.blogspot
.com;
accessed
September
30,
2010.

55.
Pratt,
Imperial
Eyes.

56.
Hartman,
Scenes
of
Subjection;
Issac,
American
Tropics;
Luibheid,
Entry
Denied.
See
also
Fajardo,
"Transportation,"
Tinsley,
"Black
Atlantic,
Queer
Atlantic."

57.
Smith,
Conquest,
10,
139.

58.
Anderson,
A
Recognition
of
Being;
Lawrence,
"Real"
Indians
and
Others;
Lawrence
and
Anderson,
eds.,
Strong
Women
Stories;
Finley,
"Decolonizing
the
Queer
Native
Body."
On
Indigenous
feminist
thought
and
women's
movements,
see
Goeman
and
Denetdale,
eds.,
"Native
Feminisms";
Green,
ed.,
Making
Space
for
Indigenous
Feminism;
Suzack
et
al.,
eds.,
Indigenous
Women
and
Feminism.

59.
See
Driskill
et
al.,
eds.,
Queer
Indigenous
Studies;
Justice
and
Cox,
eds.,
Queering
Native
Literature,
Indigenizing
Queer
Theory;
Justice,
Rifkin,
and
Schneider,
eds.,
Sexuality,
Nationality,
Indigeneity.

6o.
Finley,
"Decolonizing
the
Queer
Native
Body";
Miranda,

327
"Extermination
of
the
Joyas";
Rifkin,
When
Did
Indians
Become
Straight?.

61.
Driskill,
"Stolen
from
Our
Bodies."

62.
Anguksuar,
"A
Postcolonial
Colonial
Perspective."

63.
Smith,
"Queer
Theory
and
Native
Studies,"
59;
Driskill,
"Doubleweaving
TwoSpirit
Critiques,"
76,
78.

64.
Smith,
"Queer
Theory
and
Native
Studies,"
48.

65.
Ibid.,
54.

66.
Driskill,
"Doubleweaving
Two-Spirit
Critiques,"
77.

67.
Povinelli,
The
Empire
of
Love,
4.

68.
Smith,
Native
Americans
and
the
Christian
Right,
271,
275.

69.
Sandoval,
Methodology
of
the
Oppressed.

70.
Munoz,
Disidentifications.

711.
See
Boellstorff,
The
Gay
Archipelago;
Rofel,
Desiring
China.

1.
The
Biopolitics
of
Settler
Sexuality
and
Queer
Modernities

z.
Achille
Mbembe,
"Necropolitics."

2.
Morgensen,
"The
Biopolitics
of
Settler
Colonialism."

3.
I
call
berdache
a
colonial
object
to
reference
its
colonial
genealogy
and
Native
queer
critiques
of
its
use
(explored
in
chapter
2).
Although
Jacobs,
Thomas,
and
Lang
propose
using
the
specific
formulation
"`berdache'
[sic]"
to
mark
this
quality
(see
Jacobs,
Thomas,
and
Lang,
"Introduction"),
I
investigate

328
it
not
by
bracketing
it
outside
common
speech
but
by
marking
its
circulation
as
an
object
of
colonial
thought.
In
my
usage,
berdache
never
describes
Native
culture;
it
only
describes
a
colonial
imaginary
of
indigeneity.

4.
Wolfe,
Settler
Colonialism
and
the
Transformation
of
Anthropology.

5.
Foucault,
The
Birth
of
Biopolitics;
Foucault,
Discipline
and
Punish;
Foucault,
Senellart,
and
Ewad,
Security,
Territory,
Population.

6.
Agamben,
Homo
Sacer;
Agamben,
State
of
Exception.

7.
Rifkin,
"Indigenizing
Agamben,"
94.
On
the
location
of
Indigenous
peoples
in
the
state
of
exception
under
white
settler
colonization,
see
also
Thobani,
Exalted
Subjects.

8.
Stoler,
Carnal
Knowledge
and
Imperial
Power;
Stoler,
Race
and
the
Education
of
Desire.

9.
Foucault,
The
History
of
Sexuality:
Volume
1;
Stoler,
Carnal
Knowledge
and
Imperial
Power,
144.

io.
Stoler,
Carnal
Knowledge
and
Imperial
Power,
156;
Stoler,
Race
and
the
Education
of
Desire,
190.

ii.
The
introductory
chapter
to
Stoler,
Carnal
Knowledge
and
Imperial
Power,
provides
a
useful
review.

12.
Stoler,
Race
and
the
Education
of
Desire,
83.

113.
See
Hartman,
Scenes
of
Subjection.

114.
Goldberg,
"Sodomy
in
the
New
World,"
4,
6-7.

329
 15.
See
Laqueur,
Making
Sex.

116.
Behrend-Martinez,
"Manhood
and
the
Neutered
Body
in
Early
Modern
Spain";
Shepard,
Meanings
of
Manhood
in
Early
Modern
England.

17.
Tortorici,
"`Heran
Todos
Putos,"'
35,
41.

118.
See,
for
example,
Little,
Abraham
in
Arms;
Plane,
Colonial
Intimacies.

i9.
See,
for
example,
Child,
Boarding
School
Seasons;
Warrior,
The
People
and
the
Word.

20.
Roscoe,
Changing
Ones,
31.

21.
Williams,
The
Spirit
and
the
Flesh,
179.

22.
Roscoe,
Changing
Ones,
35.

23.
Ibid.,
36.

24.
Williams,
The
Spirit
and
the
Flesh,
183.

25.
Ferguson,
Aberrations
in
Black
and
"Of
Our
Normative
Strivings";
Luibheid,
Entry
Denied.
See
also
Carter,
The
Heart
of
Whiteness;
Eng,
Racial
Castration;
Shah,
"Between
'Oriental
Depravity'
and
'Natural
Degenerates."'

26.
Somerville,
Queering
the
Color
Line.

27.
Mumford,
Interzones;
Johnson
and
Henderson,
eds.,
Black
Queer
Studies.

28.
Terry,
An
American
Obsession.

29.
See
Adam,
The
Rise
of
a
Gay
and
Lesbian
Movement;
D'Emilio,
Sexual

330
Politics,
Sexual
Communities.

30.
Bederman,
Manliness
and
Civilization;
Gustav-Wrathall,
Take
the
Young
Stranger
by
the
Hand."

311.
Kennedy,
Ulrichs;
Steakley,
"Per
Scientiam
ad
Justitiam."
Oosterhuis
portrays
Krafft-Ebing
and
Karl
Westphal
as
developing
theories
of
"contrary
sexual
feeling"
in
response
to
Ulrichs's
invitations,
while
readers
of
Psychopathia
Sexualis
wrote
to
Krafft-Ebing
to
invite
or
suggest
their
own
diagnosis
(Oosterhuis,
Stepchildren
of
Nature).

32.
For
the
frequency
of
historical
citations
of
berdache,
see
Roscoe,
"Bibliography
of
Berdache
and
Alternative
Gender
Roles
among
Native
North
American
Indians."

33.
Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia
Sexualis;
Ellis,
Studies
in
the
Psychology
of
Sex;
Seligmann,
"Sexual
Inversion
among
Primitive
Races";
Karsch-Haack,
"Uranismus
oder
Paderastie
and
Tribadie
bet
den
Naturvolkern."

34.
See
Seligmann,
"Sexual
Inversion
among
Primitive
Races,"
12;
Ellis,
Studies
in
the
Psychology
of
Sex,
16-17,
23.

35.
Carpenter,
Intermediate
Types
among
Primitive
Folk;
Carpenter,
The
Intermediate
Sex.

36.
See
Brickman,
Aboriginal
Populations
in
the
Mind;
Torgovnick,
Gone
Primitive.

37.
Hay,
Radically
Gay.

38.
Hay,
"A
Separate
People
Whose
Time
Has
Come";
Thompson,
"This
Gay
Tribe."

331
 39.
Stewart,
"Homosexuality
among
American
Indians
and
Other
Native
Peoples";
Carpenter,
"Selected
Insights."

40.
Miranda,
"The
Extermination
of
the
Driskill,
"Shaking
Our
Shells";
Driskill,
Walking
with
Ghosts.

411.
Smith,
Decolonizing
Methodologies.
I
draw
this
connotation
in
Smith's
term
from
Driskill
(Driskill
et
al.,
"Introduction").

42.
Gilley,
Becoming
Two-Spirit.

43.
Foucault,
The
History
of
Sexuality:
Volume
1.

44.
Pratt,
Imperial
Eyes,
6-7.

2.
Conversations
on
Berdache

i.
I
refer
here
not
to
the
vast
array
of
research
by
ARGOH
and
SOLGA
scholars,
but
to
its
first
decade
of
scholarship
on
berdache.
The
group's
very
different
public
profiling
by
the
work
of
Gilbert
Herdt-which,
however,
never
eclipsed
the
publicity
of
berdache-is
examined
by
Deborah
Elliston
in
"Erotic
Anthropology."

2.
See,
for
example,
Bayer,
Homosexuality
and
American
Psychiatry.

3.
Taylor,
"Homosexuality."

4.
Taylor,
"Background
Information,"
3-4.

5.
Amory,
"The
History
of
SOLGA."
See
also
Banner,
Intertwined
Lives.

6.
Taylor,
"Background
Information."

7.
Anthropological
Research
Group
on
Homosexuality,
A.R.G.O.H.

332
Charter,"
3.

8.
Carrier,
"Toward
an
A.A.A.
Symposium
on
Homosexuality
in
1980";
Williams,
"Sessions
on
Homosexuality,"
2.

9.
Gross,
"Messages
from
Our
New
Co-Presidents,"
3;
Carrier,
"Notes
on
AAA
Business
Meeting
of
ARGOH,"
2.

io.
Kutsche,
"A.R.G.O.H.
in
The
Political
Action
Committee
is
introduced
in
ARGOH
Newsletter
4
(1982):
1-2.
Kutsche's
first
campaign
is
announced
in
ARGOH
Newsletter
4
(1983):
4.
A
history
of
antidiscrimination
language
in
t h e
AAA
appears
in
ARGOH
Newsletter
5
(1984):
1-2.
An
immediate
response
to
the
Committee
on
Ethics's
negative
response
appears
in
ARGOH
Newsletter
Kutsche
presents
a
final
announcement
of
the
positive
results
in
ARGOH
Newsletter
9
(1987):
1.

ii.
In
1986,
the
ARGOH
Award
was
described
as
recognizing
a
"distinguished
scholarly
contribution
with
a
cross-cultural
perspective
(including
work
on
American
culture)
on
the
subject
of
lesbianism
and/or
male
homosexuality."
The
first
award
announcement
rephrased
this
as
"Distinguished
Scholarship
on
a
Lesbian
or
Gay
Topic."
See
Newton,
"A.R.G.O.H.
Annual
Award,"
4;
Blackwood,
"Winner
of
the
1986
A.R.G.O.H.
Award,"
8.

112.
See,
for
example,
Herdt,
ed.,
Ritualized
Homosexuality
in
Melanesia.

113.
Anthropological
Research
Group
on
Homosexuality,
"A.R.G.O.H.
Charter,"
3.

114.
Mead,
Male
and
Female,
142;
Benedict,
Patterns
of
Culture,
294.

115.
Mead,
Sex
and
Temperament,
294;
Benedict,
Patterns
of
Culture,

333
262,
264.
See
also
Mead,
Coming
of
Age
in
Samoa.

16.
Ford
and
Beach,
Patterns
of
Sexual
Behavior,
130.

17.
See
Angelino
and
Shedd,
"A
Note
on
Berdache";
Jacobs,
"Berdache";
Kroeber,
"Psychosis
or
Social
Sanction";
Sonenschein,
"Homosexuality
as
a
Subject
of
Anthropological
Inquiry";
Stewart,
"Homosexuality
among
American
Indians
and
Other
Native
Peoples."

118.
Callender
and
Kochems,
"The
North
American
Berdache,"
443;
Callender
and
Kochems,
"Men
and
Not-Men,"
168.

z9.
Whitehead,
"The
Bow
and
the
Burden
Strap,"
108-9.

20.
Raymond,
The
Transsexual
Empire.

21.
Blackwood,
"Breaking
the
Mirror,"
2.

22.
Blackwood,
ed.,
The
Many
Faces
of
Homosexuality;
Blackwood,
"Breaking
the
Mirror,"
2.

23.
Blackwood,
"Sexuality
and
Gender
in
Certain
Native
American
Tribes."

24.
Williams,
The
Spirit
and
the
Flesh,
207.

25.
Blackwood,
"Winner
of
the
1986
A.R.G.O.H.
Award,"
8.

26.
Blackwood,
"Report
on
the
ARGOH
Business
Meeting,"
3-4.

27.
Mass,
"On
the
Future
of
Lesbian
and
Gay
Studies,"
242.
See
also
Roscoe,
"Making
History."
Roscoe
submitted
records
of
his
publications
to
the
SOLGA
newsletter
and
at
least
one
research
report:
Roscoe,
"History
Comes
Home."

334
 28.
Dickemann,
"SOLGA
Member
Wins
1991
Margaret
Mead
Award."

29.
Roscoe,
"Comments
on
Receiving
the
Margaret
Mead
Award."

30.
This
quotation
is
not
cited
in
SOLGAs
reprinting
of
Roscoe's
text.

31.
Blackwood,
"Review:
The
Zuni
Man-Woman,"
5S.

32.
On
the
history
of
RFD
and
back-to-the-land
projects,
see
Herring,
"Out
of
the
Closets,
into
the
Woods."

33.
Treelove,
"Spring,
Spirit,
and
Faggotry,"
44.

34.
Issues
1-6
(fall
1974-winter
1975)
were
published
from
Iowa
City.
Issues
7-16
(spring
were
published
from
Wolf
Creek,
Oregon.
Beginning
with
issue
17
(fall
1978),
publication
moved
to
Efland,
North
Carolina,
after
which
sites
continued
to
shift.
Some
issues
were
"farmed
out":
while
RFD
was
published
in
North
Carolina,
New
Orleans
residents
produced
issues
18
and
22,
and
New
England
residents
issue
21.

35.
RFD
Collective,
"Collective
Statement,"
4.

36.
Jerry,
"RFD
Reader
Survey,"
39.

37.
Bob,
Steve,
and
Allen,
"Recipe
for
a
Small
Cabin";
John,
"Gardening
with
the
Fairies";
RFD
Collective,
"Uncle
Ned
Says,
`Let's
Eat!"'

38.
RFD
Collective,
"Collective
Statement,"
4.

39.
Larry
and
Steven,
"Our
Theme...,"
8;
Hermsen,
"When
the
Sun
Stands
Still";
Steczynski,
"Wholeness:
Masculine
&
Feminine."

40.
Phillips,
"Electric
Consciousness,"
24.

335
 411.
Joyous,
"We
Circle
Around,"
13,
14.

42.
Castaneda,
The
Teachings
of
Don
Juan.

43.
Caradoc,
"Sharing
the
Mysteries,"
25,
27.

44.
RFD
Collective,
"Spiritual
Soapbox,"
30.

45.
Lindner,
"Letter,"
3.

46.
Holloway,
"Letter,"
2.

47.
Manes,
"Letter,"
2.

48.
Cornbelt,
"Letter,"
5.

49.
Smoothstone,
"Response
to
Arnold
J.
Cornbelt,"'
5.

50.
Evans,
"Things
That
Go
Bump
in
the
Night,"
17.

51.
Evans,
Witchcraft
and
the
Gay
Counterculture,
111.

52.
Carl,
"Loving
Circle,"
31-32.

53.
Phillips,
"Electric
Consciousness,"
24.

54.
Hay,
"A
Call
to
Gay
Brothers."
See
also
Clark,
"The
Native
American
Berdache."

55.
Roscoe,
The
Zuni
Man-Woman,
vii;
Williams,
The
Spirit
and
the
Flesh.

56.
Mass,
"On
the
Future
of
Lesbian
and
Gay
Studies,"
244-45;
Roscoe,
The
Zuni
Man-Woman,
vii.

57.
Roscoe,
"Dreaming
the
Myth,"
116,
120,
123;
emphasis
in
the
original.

336
 58.
Mass,
"On
the
Future
of
Lesbian
and
Gay
Studies,"
243-44.

59.
On
harassment
faced
by
early
organizers,
see
Medicine,
"Changing
Native
American
Roles
in
an
Urban
Context,"
154.

60.
See,
for
example,
Anguksuar,
"Angukcuaq
Lafortune";
Burns,
"American
Indians
Neglected";
Gays
and
Lesbians
of
the
First
Nations
in
Toronto,
"The
Greater
Vancouver
Native
Cultural
Society."

611.
Burns,
"Preface";
Pahe,
"Speaking
Up,"
111.

62.
Burns,
"Preface,"
5.

63.
Gay
American
Indians,
"Publication
Proposal."

64.
Kenney,
"Tinselled
Bucks";
Midnight
Sun,
"Sex/Gender
Systems
in
Native
North
America."

65.
Kenney,
"Tinselled
Bucks,"
31.

66.
Burns,
"Preface,"
4-5.

67.
Hall,
"Children
of
Grandmother
Moon,"
104.

68.
Burns,
"Preface,"
2-3.

69.
Burns
describes
the
GAI
History
Project
as
having
"compiled
an
extensive
bibliography
of
sources
on
berdache"
and
"coordinated
the
development
of
this
anthology."
Living
the
Spirit
is
published
with
the
designation
"Compiled
by
Gay
American
Indians"
while
also
indicating
"Will
Roscoe,
Coordinating
Editor."
Some
references
to
Living
the
Spirit
omit
Gay
American
Indians
as
an
editing
body
and
cite
Roscoe
as
sole
editor.
The
bibliography
compiled
by
the
History
Project
is
printed
in
Living
the
Spirit

337
without
indication
of
authorship.
Roscoe
published
an
article
separately
that
expanded
upon
this
data.
See
Burns,
"Preface,"
4;
Roscoe,
"Bibliography
of
Berdache
and
Alternative
Gender
Roles
among
Native
North
American
Indians,"
81-171.

70.
Pahe,
"Speaking
Up,"
110.

711.
Thomas
and
Jacobs,
"'...
And
We
Are
Still
Here,"'
92.

72.
Anguksuar,
"A
Postcolonial
Colonial
Perspective,"
221;
Thomas
and
Jacobs,
..
And
We
Are
Still
Here,"'
92.

73.
Little
Thunder,
"I
Am
a
Lakota
Womyn,"
203.

74.
Red
Earth,
"Traditional
Influences
on
a
Contemporary
Gay-Identified
Sisseton
Dakota";
Wilson,
"How
We
Find
Ourselves."

75.
Thomas,
"Navajo
Cultural
Constructions
of
Gender
and
Sexuality";
Thomas
and
Jacobs,
"`...
And
We
Are
Still
Here,"'
92.

76.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe,
"New
Movement
for
Two
Spirits."

77.
Jacobs,
Thomas,
and
Lang,
"Introduction,"
8.

78.
Thomas
and
Jacobs,
"`...
And
We
Are
Still
Here,"'
91.

79.
Jacobs,
"Is
the
'North
American
Berdache'
Merely
a
Phantom
in
the
Imagination
of
Western
Social
Scientists%"
21.

80.
Jacobs,
Thomas,
and
Lang,
"Introduction,"
8.

811.
Jacobs,
"Letter:
'Revisiting
the
"North
American
Berdache,"
Empirically
and
Theoretically,"'
3.

338
 82.
Tafoya,
"M.
Dragonfly,"
195.

83.
Little
Thunder,
"I
Am
a
Lakota
Womyn,"
208.

84.
Anguksuar,
"A
Postcolonial
Colonial
Perspective,"
219.

85.
Tafoya,
"M.
Dragonfly,"
194.
See
also
Patton,
Inventing
AIDS,
148.

86.
Blackwood,
"Native
American
Genders
and
Sexualities,"
288-89.

87.
Two-Spirit
activism
accomplished
this
by
a
critique
of
anthropology
resonant
with
Johannes
Fabian's
Time
and
the
Other.

88.
See
the
different
arguments
in
the
GLO
issue
on
the
topic
"Sexuality,
Nationality,
Indigeneity":
Driskill,
"Doubleweaving
Two-Spirit
Critiques";
Justice,
"Notes
toward
a
Theory
of
Anomaly";
Stevens,
"Poetry
and
Sexuality."

3.
Authentic
Culture
and
Sexual
Rights

i.
On
the
white-supremacist
and
settler
colonial
management
and
erasure
of
Native
peoples,
see
Bruyneel,
The
Third
Space
of
Sovereignty;
Lawrence,
"Real"
Indians
and
Others;
Turner,
This
Is
Not
a
Peace
Pipe.

2.
Scholarship
on
queer
citizenship
that
helps
inspire
this
analysis
includes
Brandzel,
"Queering
Citizenship%";
Luibheid,
"Introduction";
Reddy,
"Asian
Diasporas,
Neoliberalism,
and
Family."

3.
Epstein,
"Gay
Politics,
Ethnic
Identity";
Halley,
"`Like
Race'
Arguments";
Joseph,
Against
the
Romance
of
Community.

4.
Brown,
States
of
Injury.

5.
Povinelli,
The
Cunning
of
Recognition.

339
 6.
See
Gordon
and
Newfield,
eds.,
Mapping
Multiculturalism;
Jacobson,
Roots
Too;
Lipsitz,
The
Possessive
Investment
in
Whiteness;
Takagi,
The
Retreat
from
Race.

7.
Katz,
Gay
American
History,
3.

8.
Legg,
"The
Berdache
and
Theories
of
Sexual
Inversion";
Stewart,
"Homosexuality
among
American
Indians
and
Other
Native
Peoples."

9.
Katz,
Gay
American
History,
329.

io.
Devereux,
"Institutionalized
Homosexuality
of
the
Mohave
Indians."

ii.
Katz,
Gay
American
History,
332-34.

12.
See,
for
example,
Murphy,
Ruiz,
and
Serlin,
eds.,
Queer
Futures.

113.
Marmot,
"Homosexuality
and
Cultural
Value-Systems."
This
and
subsequent
documentation
of
the
early
NGTF
appear
in
the
NGLTF
Collected
Papers,
Human
Sexuality
Collection,
Cornell
University
Library.

114.
Blackswan,
"It's
a
Shame
We
Don't
Have
More
People
of
Color
Participating,"
27.

15.
Hull,
"The
Posters
Transformed
the
Landscape
I
Live
In,"
29.

16.
White
and
Hull,
"The
Women
Left
Angry
and
Most
Likely
Disgusted
with
Us."

117.
White
and
Hull,
"As
a
Member
of
the
Gay
Community,
I
Am
Affected
by
Racism
Everyday."

118.
Joseph,
Against
the
Romance
of
Community.

340
 z9.
See,
for
example,
Anzaldua,
"Bridge,
Drawbridge,
Sandbar,
Island";
Hemphill,
ed.,
Brother
to
Brother;
Ordona,
"The
Challenges
Facing
Asian
and
Pacific
Island
Lesbians
in
the
U.S.";
Trujillo,
ed.,
Chicana
Lesbians;
Trujillo,
ed.,
Living
Chicana
Theory.

20.
Diversity
Center,
Annual
Report
(2000):
1.

21.
On
historically
concurrent
political
struggles
see
Irvine,
"A
Place
in
the
Rainbow."

22.
See
diversitycenter.org,
accessed
September
30,
2010.

23.
See
Cantu,
The
Sexuality
of
Migration.

24.
Personal
communications
from
Randy
Burns,
Sharon
Day,
and
Clyde
M.
Hall.

25.
Lebsock,
"North
East
Two-Spirit
Society."

26.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe,
"We
Wah
&
Bar
Chee
Ampe."

27.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe,
"We'wah
and
Bar
Chee
Ampe:
Gay
and
Lesbian
Indigenous
People,
New
York
City,"
2.

28.
Ibid.
See
also
Roscoe,
The
Zuni
Man-Woman.

29.
Lebsock,
"North
East
Two-Spirit
Society"
14.

30.
Cairos
Collective,
"Founding
Matrons
&
Patrons."

31.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe,
"What
Are
Two
Spirits
P"
4.

32.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe,
"500
Years
of
Survival
and
Resistance,"
16-17.

341
 33.
Romo-Carmona,
Jackson,
and

34.
I
discuss
this
latter
implication
by
examining
Romo-Carmona's
contribution
to
the
collective
in
chapter
5.

4.
Ancient
Roots
through
Settled
Land

i.
See
Hennen,
Faeries,
Bears,
and
Leathermen;
Povinelli,
The
Empire
of
Love;
Stover,
"When
Pan
Met
Wendy."

2.
Hay,
"A
Call
to
Gay
Brothers";
Thompson,
"This
Gay
Tribe."

3.
Hennessy,
"Fey
Enough%";
Stover,
"When
Pan
Met
Wendy."

4.
Radical
Faerie
demography
defies
quantitative
accounting:
no
central
database
records
historical
demographics,
and
while
the
Holy
Faerie
Database
recorded
West
Coast
gatherers,
no
list
collected
racial
or
national
identity.
In
chapter
5
1
explain
my
argument
that
Radical
Faeries
fully
intersect
the
urban
queer
communities
that
historically
formed
and
sustained
them.

5.
Povinelli,
The
Empire
of
Love,
4.

6.
See
Kasee,
"Identity,
Recovery,
and
Religious
Imperialism."

7.
These
two
key
historical
sites
of
Radical
Faerie
culture
in
the
United
States
support
its
two
oldest
continuous
networks.
Each
has
a
residential
community;
during
my
research,
Wolf
Creek
housed
up
to
six
persons,
while
long-term
visitors
and
residents
at
Short
Mountain
numbered
ten
to
twenty.
Major
gatherings
at
Short
Mountain
occurred
in
May
and
October
near
neo-
pagan
festivals,
while
in
199
5
an
annual
midsummer
"spiritual
gathering
of
Radical
Faeries"
was
renewed
at
Wolf
Creek.

8.
Abelove,
"New
York
City
Gay
Liberation
and
the
Queer
Commuters";

342
D'Emilio,
"Foreword."

9.
Milo
Pyne,
interview;
Sears,
Rebels,
Rubyfruits,
and
Rhinestones.

io.
Herring,
Queering
the
Underworld;
Valentine,
"Making
Space."

ii.
RFD
Collective,
"Faggots
&
Class
Struggle."

112.
Conner,
Blossom
of
Bone;
Hay,
"Toward
the
New
Frontiers
of
Fairy
Vision";
Roscoe,
"Dreaming
the
Myth";
Rose,
A
Radical
Fairy's
Seedbed;
Thompson,
"This
Gay
Tribe."

113.
See
Anderson,
"On
the
Dangers
of
Faerie
Anti-Intellectualism";
Royale,
"As
a
Matter
of
Fact";
Weinstein,
"Romancing
the
Stone
Age."
Faeries
of
All
Colors
Together,
a
first
affinity
group
to
support
gay
men
of
color
and
address
racism
among
Radical
Faeries,
formed
in
2000
at
Short
Mountain.
Weinstein's
critique
of
cultural
appropriation
is
the
only
such
text
in
the
RFD
special
issue
"Faerie
Primitives."

114.
Hay,
Radically
Gay,
254.

15.
See
Thompson,
"This
Gay
Tribe."

16.
Engstrom,
"The
Queer
God
Ritual."

1[7.
Hay,
"Toward
the
New
Frontiers
of
Fairy
Vision";
Circle
of
Loving
Companions,
"The
Gays."

118.
Brickman,
Aboriginal
Populations
in
the
Mind.

z9.
Deloria,
Playing
Indian.

20.
Clifford,
Routes.

343
 211.
Kayal,
Bearing
Witness;
Levine,
Nardi,
and
Gagnon,
eds.,
In
Changing
Times;
Stoller,
Lessons
from
the
Damned.

22.
Cohen,
The
Boundaries
of
Blackness;
Rodriguez,
Queer
Latinidad;
Vernon,
Killing
Us
Quietly.

23.
Blackswan,
"It's
a
Shame
We
Don't
Have
More
People
of
Color
Participating,"
27.

24.
Royale,
"As
a
Matter
of
Fact."

25.
Munoz,
Disidentifications.

26.
Braziel,
"Dred's
Drag
Kinging";
Baur,
Venus
Boyz.

27.
Holmes,
"Into
the
Woods."

28.
Blackberri,
"Searching
for
My
Gay
Spiritual
Roots."

29.
Blackswan,
"It's
a
Shame
We
Don't
Have
More
People
of
Color
Participating,"
28.

30.
See,
for
example,
Tiya
Miles
and
Sharon
Patricia
Holland,
eds.,
Crossing
Waters,
Crossing
Worlds.

311.
Hall,
personal
communication.
See
also
Hall's
biographical
profile
(http://
www.ncpc.info/clyde_hall.html)
and
his
"Children
of
Grandmother
Moon."

32.
Hall,
personal
communication.
On
the
history
of
the
northern
Shoshone
and
Naraya,
see
Hultkrantz,
Belief
and
Worship
in
Native
North
America;
Liljeblad,
The
Idaho
Indians
in
Transition.

344
 33.
Randy
Burns
affirms
Hall's
efforts
in
leading
the
Naraya
as
a
form
of
TwoSpirit
spiritual
leadership,
with
Shoshone
and
other
Native
dance
leaders,
some
of
whom
are
also
Two-Spirited.
In
1991,
on
hearing
of
the
first
Naraya
dance
to
admit
non-Natives
held
in
New
York
City
in
1991,
Curtis
Harris
and
Kent
Lebsock,
writing
for
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe,
wrote
a
strong
critique
of
Hall
in
Buffalo
Hide
(Burns,
personal
communication;
Harris
and
Lebsock,
"Things
Sacred").
Hall
directs
the
nonprofit
Naraya
Cultural
Preservation
Council
(NCPC),
which
describes
the
Naraya
on
its
Web
site
as
"A
Dance
for
All
Peoples."
The
dance
is
performed
at
a
small
set
of
sites
across
the
continent
in
Native
communities-including
the
Shoshone-Bannock
reservation-and
for
non-Native
or
mixed
non-Native/Native
networks.
Fees
are
not
charged,
and
participants
may
contribute
to
"projects"
initiated
by
the
NCPC
in
Great
Basin
Native
communities,
which
include
oral
history
projects,
the
recording
of
traditional
songs,
and
land
preservation
projects.
See
www.ncpc.info,
accessed
September
30,
2010.

34.
Thompson,
"Clyde
Hall,"
121,
122.

5.
Global
Desires
and
Transnational
Solidarity

z.
Altman,
Global
Sex;
Boellstorff,
The
Gay
Archipelago;
Massad,
Desiring
Arabs;
Rofel,
Desiring
China.

2.
Alexander,
Pedagogies
of
Crossing;
Grewal,
Transnational
America;
Manalansan,
Global
Divas;
Rodriguez,
Queer
Latinidad.

3.
Puar,
Terrorist
Assemblages;
Alexander,
Pedagogies
of
Crossing;
King,
"`There
Are
No
Lesbians
Here."'

4.
Sandoval,
Methodology
of
the
Oppressed,
27.

5.
Deloria,
Playing
Indian.

345
 6.
By
2000,
regional
networks
managed
rural
lands
in
Oregon,
Minnesota,
a n d
Vermont,
while
residential
collectives
kept
lands
for
gatherings
in
Tennessee,
New
Mexico,
and
New
York.
Toronto
Radical
Faeries
managed
rural
land
in
Ontario,
and
in
Australia
a
group
of
Radical
Faeries
also
managed
sanctuary
land.

7.
This
is
true
even
after
Radical
Faerie
culture
attracted
international
visitors
and
spread
to
Canada,
Europe,
Australia,
or
Asia,
in
that
all
its
manifestations
inherit
a
relationship
to
U.S.
settler
colonialism
that
must
be
explained.

8.
Kreuter,
Drama
in
the
Desert;
Starhawk,
Truth
or
Dare.

9.
Vale
and
Juno,
Modern
Primitives.

zo.
Hennessy,
"Homohex,"
14.

ii.
Vale
and
Juno,
Modern
Primitives,
34.
See
also
Sprinkle,
Annie
Sprinkle.

112.
Rosenblatt,
"The
Antisocial
Skin,"
299.

13.
Portillo,
"I
Get
Real";
Musafar,
"Gryphon
Blackswan
Androgyne,"
14;
Mains,
Urban
Aboriginals,
179..

114.
Mains,
Urban
Aboriginals,
179.

15.
www.saratogasprings.com;
accessed
August
15,
2011.

116.
Bean,
"Magical
Masochist."

117.
See
Vale
and
Juno,
Modern
Primitives,
and
Bean,
"Magical
Masochist."

118.
Puar,
Terrorist
Assemblages.

346
 z9.
Cruz-Malave
and
Manalansan,
eds.,
Queer
Globalizations.

20.
Manalansan,
Global
Divas,

21.
See
also
Saranillio,
"Colonial
Amnesia."

22.
Rodriguez,
Queer
Latinidad,
74,
76.

23.
Moraga,
The
Last
Generation,
147.

24.
Anzaldfia,
Borderlands/La
Frontera;
Perez,
The
Decolonial
Imaginary.
See
also
ArrizOn,
Queering
Mestizaje.

25.
Contreras,
Bloodlines,
131,
113.

26.
Ibid.,
130.

27.
Saldana-Portillo,
The
Revolutionary
Imagination
in
Latin
America
and
the
Age
of
Development,
282.

28.
Alarcon,
"The
Theoretical
Subject(s)
of
This
Bridge
Called
My
Back
and
AngloAmerican
Feminism."

29.
Mohanty,
"Cartographies
of
Struggle,"
7.

30.
Anzaldua,
"Foreword,"
vii.

31.
Anzaldfia
and
Keating,
Interviews/Entrevistas,
132.

32.
Saldana-Portillo,
The
Revolutionary
Imagination
in
Latin
America
and
the
Age
of
Development,
280.

33.
Romo-Carmona,
Jackson,
and
Harris,
"Activists
Respond
to
the
Ouincentennial,"
11.

347
 34.
Saldana-Portillo,
The
Revolutionary
Imagination
in
Latin
America
and
the
Age
of
Development,
286.

35.
Ashcroft,
Griffiths,
and
Tiffin,
eds.,
The
Empire
Writes
Back.

36.
Brooks,
The
Common
Pot;
Bruyneel,
The
Third
Space
of
Sovereignty.

37.
Alfred,
Wasa'se;
Smith,
Native
Americans
and
the
Christian
Right.

38.
Anaya,
Indigenous
Peoples
in
International
Law;
de
Costa,
A
Higher
Authority;
Niezen,
The
Origins
of
Indigenim.

39.
For
Indigenous
feminist
critiques
of
the
nation-state
form
in
work
for
decolonization,
see
Smith,
Native
Americans
and
the
Christian
Right;
Smith
and
Kauanui,
"Native
Feminisms
Engage
American
Studies."

40.
See
Rowell,
"Developing
AIDS
Services
for
Native
Americans."

6.
"Together
We
Are
Stronger"

i.
See,
for
example,
Carson
et
al.,
eds.,
Social
Determinants
of
Indigenous
Health;
Nebelkopf
and
Phillips,
eds.,
Healing
and
Mental
Health
for
Native
Americans.

2.
Bruyneel,
The
Third
Space
of
Sovereignty;
Allen,
Blood
Narrative.

3.
Alfred,
"Sovereignty."

4.
Smith,
Native
Americans
and
the
Christian
Right.

5.
Vernon,
Killing
Us
Quietly,
1,
2.

6.
National
Alliance
of
State
and
Territorial
AIDS
Directors,
"Native
Americans
and
HIV/AIDS,"
4.

348
 7.
U.S.
Commission
on
Civil
Rights,
"A
Quiet
Crisis";
Vernon,
Killing
Us
Quietly,
2,
8.

8.
Walters
and
Simoni,
"Reconceptualizing
Native
Women's
Health";
Duran
and
Duran,
Native
American
Postcolonial
Psychology.

9.
Duran
and
Walters,
"HIV/AIDS
Prevention
in
'Indian
Country,"'
194.

io.
National
Native
American
AIDS
Prevention
Center
and
the
Rural
Center
for
AIDS/STD
Prevention,
"HIV/STD
Prevention
Guidelines
for
Native
American
Communities,"
15.
The
first
quotation
also
quotes
Walters
and
Simoni,
"Reconceptualizing
Native
Women's
Health,"
522.

ii.
This
history
is
discussed
at
length
in
Vernon,
Killing
Us
Quietly,
especially
chapters
1
and
4.
See
also
chapter
3
in
Gilley,
Becoming
Two-Spirit.

12.
Bouey
and
Duran,
"The
Ahalaya
Case-Management
Program,"

113.
National
Native
American
AIDS
Prevention
Center,
"Gathering
Our
Wisdom
II,"
13,
15.

114.
Minnesota
American
Indian
AIDS
Task
Force,
"The
Ogitchidag
Gikinooamaagad
Players";
Rush,
"Models
of
Prevention."

115.
Human
Health
Organization,
"We
Owe
It
to
Ourselves
and
to
Our
Children,"
4.

16.
Smith,
"Her
Giveaway."

117.
Rush,
"Her
Giveaway,"
4-5.

118.
National
Native
American
AIDS
Prevention
Center,
"Creating
a
Vision
for
Living
with
HIV
in
the
Circle
of
Life:
Self-Care
Manual
for
Native

349
People
Living
with
HIV/AIDS."

Ig.
See
Gilley,
Becoming
Two-Spirit.

20.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe,
"Strength
of
Our
Cultures,"
2.

211.
Albert,
"Welcoming
Remarks,"
3.

22.
Deschamps,
"We
Are
Part
of
a
Tradition."

23.
WeWah
and
BarCheeAmpe,
"Solidarity
Statement-Two
Spirits
and
HIV."

24.
See
Gilley,
Becoming
Two-Spirit;
Medicine,
"Changing
Native
American
Roles
in
an
Urban
Context."

25.
National
Native
American
AIDS
Prevention
Center,
"Leadership
De ve lo pme nt
for
Native
American
Gay/Bisexual/Two-Spirit
Native
American
Men,"
1;
Rowell,
"HIV
Prevention
for
Gay/Bisexual/Two-Spirit
Native
American
Men,"
4,
5.

26.
Rowell,
"HIV
Prevention
for
Gay/Bisexual/Two-Spirit
Native
American
Men,"
4-5.

27.
Ibid.,
37
(first
quotation);
National
Native
American
AIDS
Prevention
Center,
"Leadership
Development
for
Native
American
Gay/Bisexual/Two-
Spirit
Native
American
Men,"
2
(second
quotation).

28.
Pathmakers,
"Pathmakers
Organizational
Meeting,"
2.

29.
Kairaiuak,
Addressing
Two-Spirits.

30.
National
Native
American
AIDS
Prevention
Center,
"Together
We
Are
Stronger"
(designed
by
China
Ching).

350
 31.
Tengan,
"Ke
Kulana
He
Mahn";
Xian
and
Anbe,
Ke
Kulana
He
Mahu
(the
Rank
of
the
Transgender).

32.
Aspin,
"Exploring
Takatapui
Identity
within
the
Maori
Community."

33.
Patton,
Glohalizing
AIDS.

34.
Cameron,
"Frybread
in
Berlin."

35.
Junga-Williams,
"Rodney's
journey."

36.
Keck
and
Sikkink,
Activists
beyond
Borders.

37.
Grewal,
Transnational
America.
See
also:
INCITE!
Women
of
Color
Against
Violence,
ed.,
The
Revolution
Will
Not
Be
Funded.

38.
Warrior,
The
People
and
the
Word,
51,
53.

39.
National
Native
American
AIDS
Prevention
Center,
"Landmark
Charter
Calls
for
Full
Participation
of
Indigenous
Peoples
in
HIV
Programs."

40.
Patton,
Globalizing
AIDS
and
Inventing
AIDS.

411.
Patton,
Globalizing
AIDS,
50.

42.
Alfred,
Peace,
Power,
Righteousness;
Coulthard,
"Subjects
of
Empire."

43.
Barker,
"Recognition."

44.
See,
for
example,
Epstein,
Impure
Science;
Padilla,
Caribbean
Pleasure
Industry;
Treichler,
How
to
Have
Theory
in
an
Epidemic.

45.
Gilley,
Becoming
Two-Spirit
and
"`Snag
Bags."'

351
 46.
For
a
critique
of
culturally
appropriate
Native
health
care,
see
Smith,
Decolonizing
Methodologies.

47.
Kairaiuak,
Addressing
Two-Spirits;
Vernon,
Killing
Us
Quietly.

Epilogue

i.
Razack,
Casting
Out.

2.
Denetdale,
"Securing
Navajo
National
Boundaries."

3.
Butler,
Precarious
Life;
Olwan,
"Between
Settlement
and
Indigeneity."A
recent
case
was
the
roundtable
"Turtle
Island
and
Palestine:
Forging
Alliances
against
Settler
Colonialism"
at
the
Critical
Ethnic
Studies
and
the
Future
of
Genocide
conference,
UC
Riverside,
March
2011.

4.
Certain
implications
of
this
analysis
are
examined
in
Hochberg,
ed.,
Queer
Politics
and
the
Question
of
PalestinelIsrael.

5.
Here
I
take
particular
inspiration
from
Alexander,
Pedagogies
of
Crossing,
and
Tinsley,
"Black
Atlantic,
Oueer
Atlantic."

6.
Brooks,
"Afterword";
Harjo,
"Perhaps
the
World
Ends
Here."

7.
Pulitano,
Toward
a
Native
American
Critical
Theory.
See
also
Weaver,
"Splitting
the
Earth
Womack,
"The
Integrity
of
American
Indian
Claims."

8.
Brooks,
"Afterword,"
237.

352
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University
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430
Scott
Lauria
Morgensen
is
assistant
professor
of
gender
studies
and

cultural
studies
at
Queen's
University
in
Kingston,
Ontario,
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He
is

coeditor
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Critical
Interventions
in
Theory,
Politics,

and
Literature.

431